Health MEC Dr Sibongiseni Dhlomo this week removed district medical manager May Zuma-Mkhonza for ‘€œfailing to manage the issue of the ARV rollout at Edendale Hospital’€, following a newspaper article about the Edendale situation in the Sunday Tribune.

Zuma-Mkhonza allegedly failed to give the MEC accurate information about the crisis at Edendale and spurned an offer from an international non-governmental organisation, Broadreach, to help pay for salaries of extra doctors and pharmacists, according to hospital sources.

Yesterday Broadreach attended a meeting at the hospital at the MEC’€™s invitation to discuss how it could support Edendale’€™s ARV programme. Broadreach gets funding from the US President’€™s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief (Pepfar), and supports ARV programmes countrywide.

The hospital stopped initiating new patients on ARVs on 6 May as it did not have the staff or the pharmacy space to deal with the 11 000 patients it currently has.

Meanwhile, Edendale Hospital’€™s staff and patients praised MEC Dhlomo at a vigil yesterday (Wed) for acting decisively to address the problems preventing the hospital from admitting new patients onto its antiretroviral programme.

The 80-strong protest vigil outside the hospital had been called to commemorate some of the 2000 patients who have died while on the waiting list for ARVs at Edendale. It was supported by doctors, nurses, counsellors, traditional healers, patients and their families.

Medical manager Dr Doug Wilson said he had been ‘€œvery impressed’€ by Dhlomo’€™s commitment to address Edendale’€™s problems, once he had received a proper briefing.

Dhlomo addressed a meeting at the hospital on Tuesday night, and promised that more staff would be employed at the hospital and that   nurses at Edendale’€™s 17 feeder clinics would be trained to manage stable patients on ARVs to alleviate the burden on the hospital.

The ARV programme has been told to report directly to the provincial head of health rather than via the district, until the crisis has been resolved.

Meanwhile, HIV positive activist Phumlani Kunene said that the vigil was ‘€œin solidarity with the 2000 on the waiting list and in memory of those who died waiting for ARVs’€.

Addressing the 80-strong group with a megaphone, Kunene said that those who had died had not done so in vain, as government was now addressing the problems.

However, a doctor at the vigil who asked not to be named said that a quarter of those on the waiting list could still die as most of them had very low CD4 counts, and it would be very difficult to rebuild their immune systems.

‘€œBut at least we can be sure that the quality of care and the quality of patients is going to greatly improve in the very near future,’€ said the doctor.

Meanwhile, the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) has called a march in Edendale today (Thursday) to protest against poor health services for people living with HIV.