Plan to tackle the hotspots

Aids workers hope to test total of 1.3-million people by next March

BUFFALO City and the O R Tambo Municipality district have been identified as HIV/Aids hotspots in the Eastern Cape. These two areas have the highest number of clinics with HIV prevalent patients, according to the Eastern Cape Aids Council (ECAC).

Now ECAC has called for provincial communities to be “hands-on” in fighting the scourge which has crippled rural communities. The council’s Vuyisa Dayile said the province did not have a coherent approach to the HIV/Aids response implementation at local government level.

Poverty and unemployment have been blamed for the spread of HIV/Aids. “In order for the Eastern Cape to succeed in its quest to raise the HIV agenda high in the development agenda of the province it must have a dedicated focus on HIV, TB and STIs,” said Dayile.

“The focus on poverty is simply too wide and difficult to measure and it splits the focus of the council to numerous issues, including tracking too many indicators, often without success.”

Dayile said other leading hotspot areas in the province included Alfred Nzo and Joe Gqabi.

ECAC and Eastern Cape health MEC Pumza Dyantyi revived the HIV counselling and testing campaign in Nelson Mandela Bay as part of the province’s plan to test 1.3 million people before March 31 next year. “Through this campaign, under the theme, Ithini into Yakho? (Know your HIV status), we seek to provide our people with proper counseling so that if found HIV-positive, they get initiated and remain on treatment,” said Dyantyi.

Earlier a community-based initiative to fight HIV/Aids was proposed by ECAC at an event in East London attended by Dyantyi, MEC Pemmy Majodina and other senior government officials.

Dayile said: “In the presence of two MECs and the ECAC we discussed the proposed community-based model for HIV, TB and STIs’. This is a model aligned to KwaZulu-Natal’s Sukuma Sakhe, which has been a success. The area of Chris Hani District is using the model.”

Dayile said the model would allow the council “to get closer to its mandate of strategic information, programme design and improved coordination of the HIV response, through grassroots-based interventions”.

Dyantyi said they were working with other departments to make a success of the initiative. “We hope to test at least 100 000 people from the business sector. The transport sector and farming are also launching soon … we are targeting all sectors of society to come and be tested for HIV and we are hopeful that by the 31st March 2016 the province would have reached its targets,” she said. —