Cape Town - Government will be stepping up its fight against HIV and Aids by promoting various prevention measures, including medical male circumcision and prevention of mother to child infections, President Jacob Zuma said on Thursday.
Delivering the State of the Nation Address to a joint sitting of Parliament on Thursday, Zuma said government's massive testing campaign, announced a year ago, had proved to be successful with more than five million HIV tests having been done since the launch of the campaign.
He said government will broaden the scope of reproductive health rights and provide services related to amongst others, contraception, sexually transmitted infections, teenage pregnancy and sanitary towels for the indigent.
The Department of Health has set a target of 50 percent reduction in the number of new HIV and Aids infections by 2011. In the same time frame, antiretroviral medication would be provided to at least 80 percent of those who need the treatment.
Last year, Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan allocated an additional R3 billion to the fight against HIV and Aids. This was in addition to the R5.4 billion rand that was announced to enable the HIV and Aids programme to take on more people and improve the effectiveness of treatment programmes.
The extra money took account of further policy measures to broaden access to those co-infected with TB and women and children with CD4 counts lower than 350.
Zuma announced government's plans to revitalise 105 nursing colleges countrywide to train more nurses in preparation for the National Health Insurance scheme scheduled to be introduced in South Africa in the near future. Plans were also underway to open a medical faculty at the Limpopo Academic Hospital to train more doctors.
He said work has continued to develop the NHI policy and implementation plan. Government will soon be releasing the policy document for public engagement.
