NEWS
Issued by the Department of Health, Gauteng Provincial Government, South Africa

1 July 2004

The Gauteng Health department has signalled its intention to confront HIV and Aids head-on by raising its Aids budget by 115% in the 2004/5 fiscal year.
Presenting the budget to the provincial legislature, Health MEC Gwen Ramokgopa said the budget allocation to help combat the pandemic will be increased to R334 million.
The money will go towards prevention programmes such as the Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission (PMTCT); the post exposure prophylaxis for victims of sexual abuse; the provision of care and continuing the roll-out of the anti-retroviral treatment.
She said the province was ahead of its targets to put 10 000 people on the > > life- extending treatment by March next year. "More than 2 000 people are currently on treatment and 7 000 people have been assessed. I am also pleased to announce that seven additional hospitals namely Tembisa, Natalspruit, Leratong, Dr George Mukhari, Pretoria Academic and Far East Rand, have commenced the programme in the last few days," Ramokgopa said.

The Health MEC also announced that her department had made impressive progress with the PMTCT programme and the post exposure prophylaxis. The PMTC service is now available in 43 hospitals, community health centres and clinics with antenatal care. More than 150 000 women have benefited since the inception of the programme in 2001.

Over 15 000 people, mostly women and young girls, have benefited from the post-exposure prophylaxis service which was introduced in 2002.

For more information contact Simon Zwane on (011) 355 3543 / 082 551 9892

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