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Slow AIDS care blamed on short staff

    JOHANNESBURG

    A shortage of doctors and other healthcare workers is causing South Africa's HIV/AIDS treatment plan to lag behind, says the Ministry of Health.

    Although the programme has been described by President Thabo Mbeki as "the best in the world", for the second consecutive year it has missed its target of providing free anti-AIDS drugs to 53,000 HIV-positive people by March this year.

    Agence France-Presse quoted the ministry's director of HIV/AIDS, Nomonde Xundu, as saying: "The biggest challenge ... is getting the human resource capacity up to the level where it needs to be: in the category of pharmacists, doctors and dieticians, we are struggling."

    According to Xundu, only 33,000 people in the advanced stage of AIDS infection were receiving free treatment at the end of January 2005.

    This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions

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