The value of the much touted Global Fund to fight HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria will be seriously compromised unless ways are found to provide technical support to the least developed countries to meet the fund’s fairly demanding standards, Health minister Dr Manto Tshabalala-Msimang has warned.

Presenting her budget to Parliament, Tshabalala-Msimang said they remained concerned over the Fund’s weak response to the world’s poorest nations. “Very few benefited in the first round of allocations,” she said.  

South Africa is a major beneficiary of the Fund with the health department and its partners granted well over R1-billion over the next two years.  

The minister also announced that the first crop of nine graduates in the Cuban medical training programme would be harvested in September. Candidates were recruited largely from rural provinces and are contracted to work in the province that sponsored them. Presently South Africa has 252 students in Cuba and a further 71 will depart later this year.

Tshabalala-Msimang told parliament that she was perturbed at the poor alignment between the country’s health needs and “the professionals we are producing”.  

She accused some medical schools of turning out graduates who were so poorly equipped to deal with malaria, HIV and AIDS, Sexually Transmitted Infections and TB that they required immediate retraining.

“Professional nurses are emerging from four year training unqualified to perform as primary health care practitioners,” she said.  

In an effort to curb the “brain drain” of health professionals, Tshabalala-Msimang said deliberations at the Ministers of Commonwealth and World Health Assembly would see the implementation of a Code of Practice.

She hastened to point out that the Code would not restrict international recruitment, but by setting requirements for fairness and transparency, it would make migration more predictable and therefore less destructive.

Turning to this country’s biggest challenge, the HIV/AIDS epidemic, Tshabalala-Msimang appealed to pessimists and critics not to stand on the sidelines. “.if you have a better idea, get involved. Our hope of defeating HIV and AIDS lies in the size, the diversity and the morale of the army we build.”

The minister admitted that there may be some concerns about the lack of visible progress in the quest for safe and affordable medicines.  

She said the department had been working on four fronts since the Medicines Control Amendment Court Case last year:  

• A seven a side structure comprising the health department and pharmaceutical industry meets periodically in an effort to build a better working relationship;
• An entire package of law involving among others technical amendments to the principal Medicines Control Act and regulations pertaining to both the Pharmacy Act and the Medicines Control Amendment Act will be wrapped up this year;
• The department is gearing up to implement the new statutory provisions. Tshabalala-Msimang said this would put additional pressure on the Medicines Control Council and the Pricing Committee, but that funding for key appointments in both areas had been included in the budget;  
• Lastly, and importantly, Tshabalala-Msimang said they were continuing to explore ways of supporting the local manufacture of pharmaceutical products, and have investigated various approaches in other middle-income countries.