South Africa to refocus on HIV, TB after neglect during Covid pandemic

South Africa said it will focus its attention now on catching up on the backlog in identifying HIV and TB cases that were out on the backburner during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Health minister Joe Phaahla told the National Council of Provinces (NCOP) -- the higher tier of the South African government -- on Wednesday that his ministry would also focus on catching up with the many delays in surgical procedures and other health facilities caused by the emphasis on treating coronavirus patients in the past two years.

Phaahla's statement came as the National Institute of Communicable Disease reported 2,970 new COVID-19 cases and 31 deaths on Tuesday night.

We lost some of the pace as we focused on the pandemic. We have already agreed with all (provincial health ministers) that the key is to integrate the mitigation against COVID-19 into our comprehensive basket of services from primary health care levels upwards, including the vaccination programme, which must increasingly be part of our comprehensive services, Phaahla said.

He said the great pressure that coronavirus had put on hospitals and frontline medical staff has been greatly eased, allowing a return to issues such as getting people with HIV and tuberculosis onto appropriate treatment.

The minister conceded that South Africa had fallen behind on targets that had been agreed with UNAIDS in this regard.

Long waiting lists for surgery would also be addressed, he said.

We know there are many people who were due for a number of surgical procedures which were delayed for weeks and months, and some even for years, as a result of the pandemic occupying most of our focus in the health facilities, Phaahla said.

Explaining his department's budget of just over 64 billion rands for the new fiscal year to the NCOP, Phaahla said around 86 percent of this would be provided to the nine provincial health departments with conditions attached to use it for fighting HIV and Aids, TB and STI programmes, non-communicable diseases and increasing human resource capacity at hospitals and clinics.

A significant amount will go towards the infrastructure of new facilities or replacement or refurbishment and maintenance of health facilities because we cannot talk of improvement of quality without addressing infrastructure and equipment at our health facilities, Phaahla said.