NEWS
AIDS Takes Toll on Big African Hospital
Wall Street Journal (08.16.01)::Mark Schoofs

Africa's largest hospital, long the center of medical treatment for South African blacks, says it is being overwhelmed by AIDS patients as the disease ravages the country's population.

Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital, a 3,300-bed hospital serving Soweto, lacks enough beds and, more urgently, staff to deal with the flood of patients. At Bara, as the hospital is called, admissions have risen by nearly 40 percent over the past five years with no increase in beds or staff, according to the hospital. Staff members say the hospital's problem is caused almost as much by what they consider poor government policy toward AIDS as it is by the disease itself. An estimated 4.7 million South Africans - more than 10 percent of the population - are infected with HIV, according to the South African Department of Health.

Many doctors at Bara, like their counterparts throughout the country, are critical of South Africa's national government, which they say has failed to adequately address the AIDS epidemic. In contrast to other African countries such as Nigeria, Botswana and Uganda, South Africa has stalled on providing antiretrovirals, asserting that they are too expensive. In other countries, antiretroviral drugs have been shown to reduce the burden on hospitals by keeping AIDS patients healthy. Prof. Ken Huddle, head of the Department of Medicine at Bara, said, "We can no longer go on like this." Following a desperate letter last month from Dr. Huddle to Bara's CEO, the heads of Johannesburg's three major hospitals met to devise a strategy. The current crisis "cries out for a national plan," Huddle insisted. Many experts do not see a plateau in AIDS cases for at least another decade.

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