‘I am deeply concerned about the situation in Zimbabwe,’ Hogan told the close of the 4th SA AIDS conference. ‘The only solution is a regional SADC initiative to address health because health knows no borders.’
Earlier in the week, the conference heard that most hospitals in Zimbabwe were closed, medicines were scarce and no medical schools or nursing colleges had opened this year.
Hogan also said the current economic crisis represented ‘one of the worst economic collapses we have seen’ and that ‘we will have to be spending far better and smarter’.
‘Every year, there has been overspending in all provinces not just the Free State. The deficits have simply rolled over to the next year. The national department of health has sent financial teams into the provinces to see what the cost drivers that shoot up expenditure are,’ said Hogan.
However, Hogan said government remained ‘absolutely committed’ to the targets of the new National Strategic Plan (NSP) including the reduction of new infections by 50 percent and the treatment of 80 percent all who need it by 2011.
But she said it would ‘no longer be possible’ to say South Africa did not need donor help to achieve these targets ‘ provided that donor money was ‘sustainable’.
‘We cannot afford any stockout of ARVs, but we are looking at about 1.5-million people needing ARVs by 2011. They will need these drugs for 30 to 40 years. I doubt any country in the world has had to make such a commitment to so many people for almost half a century.’
