Department ready to implement new HIV/Aids treatment plan
The new guidelines ensures that all HIV positive pregnant women and patients on TB treatment with a CD4 count of 350 or less as well as HIV positive infants (from birth to one year irrespective of their CD4 count) will now receive ARVs at all government clinics and hospitals that offer the service.
In addition, HIV positive women who are not eligible for ARVs (CD4 count above 350) will now receive Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission (PMTCT) at 14 weeks of pregnancy instead of 28 weeks as it was previously done. This will assist in ensuring that babies are born uninfected with HIV. Expectant mothers are urged to present themselves at clinics as soon as they suspect that they are pregnant so they can be tested and put on necessary treatment timeously.
Also in this new treatment plan, women who are not eligible for ARVs (CD4 count above 350) will also receive among other things, an annual pap smear. The victims of rape will continue to receive Post Exposure Prophylaxis (PEP) and a case number will not be a necessity.
All other HIV positive people who do not fall in the above categories will continue to receive ARV treatment when their CD4 count is 200 or less.
This programme aims at decreasing mortality rate which is one of the key priorities of the health department in this term of office.
Currently, Gauteng has 73 ARV sites and plans are underway to open an additional 40 sites by the end of the 2010/11 financial year. This will not only increase the number of sites to 113 but it is also expected that the number of people on ARV treatment will increase from 250 000 to 400 000.
Encouraging people to use these services, MEC Qedani Mahlangu said, ‘Your health is your responsibility, as soon as you note signs that you might be pregnant, or have any other illness, go to your nearest health facility for tests so you can be treated speedily if required.’
MEC Mahlangu added that it is important to all to know our health status. ‘Knowledge is power. When you know your status, you will be able to live positively, prolonging your life,’ she said.
Ends
Enquiries: Mandla Sidu on 082 773 9013 or Simon Zwane on 082 551 9892.
Issued by Gauteng Department of Health and Social Development.
Author
Health-e News is South Africa's dedicated health news service and home to OurHealth citizen journalism. Follow us on Twitter @HealtheNews
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Unless otherwise noted, you can republish our articles for free under a Creative Commons license. Here’s what you need to know:
You have to credit Health-e News. In the byline, we prefer “Author Name, Publication.” At the top of the text of your story, include a line that reads: “This story was originally published by Health-e News.” You must link the word “Health-e News” to the original URL of the story.
You must include all of the links from our story, including our newsletter sign up link.
If you use canonical metadata, please use the Health-e News URL. For more information about canonical metadata, click here.
You can’t edit our material, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style. (For example, “yesterday” can be changed to “last week”)
You have no rights to sell, license, syndicate, or otherwise represent yourself as the authorized owner of our material to any third parties. This means that you cannot actively publish or submit our work for syndication to third party platforms or apps like Apple News or Google News. Health-e News understands that publishers cannot fully control when certain third parties automatically summarise or crawl content from publishers’ own sites.
You can’t republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually.
If you share republished stories on social media, we’d appreciate being tagged in your posts. You can find us on Twitter @HealthENews, Instagram @healthenews, and Facebook Health-e News Service.
You can grab HTML code for our stories easily. Click on the Creative Commons logo on our stories. You’ll find it with the other share buttons.
If you have any other questions, contact info@health-e.org.za.
Department ready to implement new HIV/Aids treatment plan
by Health-e News, Health-e News
April 1, 2010