At least 30 HIV positive people have died in the Free State every day following a moratorium the province placed on initiating any new patients on anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs, according to conservative figures from the Southern African HIV Clinicians Society.
Most hospital and clinics in the Free State have still not started treating the more than 15 000 people waiting for their anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs, however the national health department has given the assurance that drugs will now start arriving at all 28 sites.
The antiretroviral shortages in the Free State which reached crisis proportions last year when the province ran out of the critical medication are continuing, according to the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC).
The Free State health department has announced that its financial situation has reached 'dire proportions' forcing it to postpone all non-emergency surgery until January next year and stop all non-critical staff appointments.
Free State doctors say some patients denied antiretroviral treatment because of the financial crisis in the province will die, and fear that they might face court action.
Panicky e-mails sent to Free State health facilities with instructions to 'stop putting new clients on ARVs' appear to have been caused by a misinterpretation of the budget or gross financial mismanagement after National Treasury indicated that the province had spent less than half of its conditional grant allocated for prevention and treatment.
Almost half of the Free State's three million people live in households that survived on less than R800 per month in 2005.
The Free State has more than doubled its expenditure on Primary Health Care (PHC) from R91 per patient in 2001 to R221.
At the first public forum to discuss the antiretroviral rollout, healthworkers are blunt about their problems.
Ten years later, health services in the flat, often bleak, central province of Free State are stable and the quality of care is improving.
The free diflucan promised by government on December 1 last year is now available in state hospitals in certain provinces. The medication, which treats two common opportunistic infections that affect people with HIV/AIDS, is currently available in Gauteng and the Western Cape and at least four other provinces will follow soon.
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