Anti-retroviral drugs are becoming more accessible to people living with HIV through workplace programmes and research projects being set up countrywide. The drugs can’t cure HIV but they can stop the virus from growing in your body, thus giving your body’s immune system a chance to recover.

The tricky thing about anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs is that if they are not taken properly – at the same time every day 90% of the time — they will not work and might even result in drug resistant strains of HIV developing.

For this reason, people on ARVs need a lot of support to help them adhere to their treatment – something that is not always recognised by the doctors who prescribe the drugs.

“We get calls at night from people in the private sector who have been given a bunch of pills and don’t know how to take them,” says the Treatment Action Campaign’s (TAC) Zackie Achmat. Peter Adams knows full well how difficult it is to adhere to an anti-retroviral treatment regimen. But he also knows that the drugs saved his life and he has been taking them religiously every day for the past eight years.

After battling with different pills and sometimes forgetting to take the medication. Adams started a 24-hour Treatment Helpline four years ago to offer support to people who are on anti-retroviral drugs. The helpline is a free service which is supported by drug companies GlaxoSmithKline and MSD.

“Adherence is the cornerstone of successful ARV therapy,” says Adams. “It is your lifelong commitment to fighting HIV. It means taking your medication every day in the manner prescribed by your doctor.”

“My initiatives are supported by the Southern African HIV Clinicians Society,” he says. “It represents recognition of the importance of the patient in fighting this dreadful disease.” People from all walks of life call, says Adams. Many do not know about how to copes with side effects while others simply need encouragement to take their medicine.

At a recent TAC conference on ARV treatment, doctors involved in ARV treatment identified “psycho-social support” as one of the most crucial pillars of drug adherence. A person without support who did not understand their treatment was far likely to stop taking their pills than a person who had a supportive family and understood how important adherence was, reported the doctors.

TAC has also been running “treatment literacy” programmes for the past 18 months to prepare people living with HIV for treatment, both of opportunistic infections (such as TB and thrush) that often come with HIV and ARVs.

Co-ordinator Siphokazi Mthathi says TAC has been working primarily through clinics and HIV support groups, primarily aiming at people with HIV. “We have also been invited to run education programmes for some of the projects offering ARV treatment and at workplaces that offer ARV therapy,   such as Daimler Chrysler in the Eastern Cape,” says Mthathi.

TAC and Medicins sans Frontieres (MSF) have been running a joint treatment literacy programme in Khayelitsha since 2001 to complement the MSF treatment programme there.

The MSF clinics have over 350 patients on ARVs, while 3 000 others being treated for opportunistic infections. The programme is definitely having an impact, as recent research by the Centre for AIDS Development and Research (Cadre) found that Khayelitsha was the township that had the highest percentage of residents who had been for an HIV test.

“We are rolling out a national treatment literacy programme nationally, and hope to have treatment co-ordinators in most provinces within the next three months,” says Mthathi.

· The Treatment Helpline can be reached on 082 853 0300