Test and treat announced

National Department of Health (South Africa) announced test and treat from September and R3 billion for young women and girls campaign in the 2016/17 budget speech. Good news in our collective efforts to end HIV and AIDS by 2030. To meet the NDP objective of reducing the burden of disease, to have life expectancy of 70 years by 2030 and to have an AIDS-free generation of under 20s, the Department announced two major plans:

• In September this year, they will remove CD4 count as an eligibility criterion for ARV treatment, moving to test and treat in line with the new guidelines released by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in December last year.
• PrEP (Pre Exposure Prophylaxis) will be provided to sex workers in 10 sex worker programmes from June this year. With regard to providing PrEP to young women, the Department will start by learning lessons from demonstration projects on how best provide PrEP to them before offering this intervention to all vulnerable young women.

The new programmes will cost an additional R1 billion in this year’s budget.

Read the Minister’s budget speech in full >