Health Minister must sort out medicine shortages

These medicines save lives and patients should not have to suffer the anxiety of not knowing if they will get their prescribed drugs. Stopping antiretroviral treatment can result in resistance, which means the drugs don’t work anymore and the patient has to then be put onto a different, more expensive and harder-to-take regimen.

It is hard to believe that this problem is confined to antiretroviral medicines. Last year there was a stockout of another life-saving drug called amphotericin B, although in that case, in contrast to the current situation, it was almost entirely the fault of the drug company that supplied the drug.

The Southern African HIV Clinicians Society wrote to Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi in late March, asking for an urgent investigation into the shortages. It is unclear what the response to that request has been. GroundUp could not get a coherent response from the Health Department despite extensive efforts.

Minister Motsoaledi has a deservedly good reputation as an effective minister who has turned around many of the policy debacles created by the late Manto Tshabalala-Msimang. But now he must show that he can get his department to run its operational logistics properly.