The government has violated the Constitution by imposing a moratorium on the roll-out of antiretroviral drugs, for new HIV/AIDS patients in the Free State, the AIDS Law Project recently told a civil society gathering in Bloemfontein.
The controversial moratorium imposed by the Free State Health Department on the provision of anti-retrovirals (ARVs) to new AIDS patients, has hit patients and their families hard.
The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) says the Free State moratorium on the provision of anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs for new patients was never lifted. The provincial government imposed the moratorium on the lifesaving drugs in November of 2008.
While the Free State Health Department maintains that last November's moratorium preventing about 15 000 new patients from getting antiretroviral treatment has been lifted, patients and civil society organisations paint a different picture.
Less than 600 patients have started antiretroviral treatment since the Free State province lifted the moratorium on treatment and the waiting list of 15 000 grows daily.
The AIDS epidemic in our country, over more than 10 years, has had sadly many more downs than ups.
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.
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