South Africa reaches critical point in fight against HIV

South African activists are warning that HIV treatment in South Africa may have become too successful, leading some patients into complacency. Moreover, the country will need to improve its facilities to care for patients who will need a long-term sustained effort to keep them alive. This is especially true for children.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - Michael Weinstein, president of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, based in the US, warned South African officials that despite their success with distributing effective antiviral medications, a lot more would be needed to ensure long-term patient survival.

"South Africa has had a miraculous past five years in HIV treatment thanks to the ARV roll-out especially in KZN.

You can help keep the pressure up against this dreaded disease!

"From where it was to where it is now, it's a breathtaking improvement.

"However the country is now at a critical point where despite the tremendous progress that has been made, there are not enough infrastructures to support the 5 million HIV-positive people requiring treatment and its success with the HIV over the past five years has led to some degree of complacency.

"The country will need to reinforce its community care clinics and step up its communication and social marketing in a number of areas to ensure adequate care is provided for treatment. This includes the importance of testing for the virus, an increase in trained personnel and increasing infrastructure for treatment," Weinstein told the media.

In addition to building up infrastructure, communities across Africa still need for effective medications to be delivered. South Africa has 5 million HIV/AIDS victims in the country. About 330,000 of those children have the disease through no fault of their own. Many of these children often become orphans at a young age and must live in an orphanage or with family, who must then bear the expense for their treatment.

The impacts of this dreaded disease are severe, to say the least.

Your Catholic Voice Foundation is working to keep the progress gained in the fight against HIV and AIDS and is combining the delivery of medications with moral education to put an end to this scourge of humanity. If the fight against this dreaded disease and the protection of innocent children is of interest to you, please consider giving to this important program. Each dose of medicine you send will be matched though our new BUY A DOSE GIVE A DOSE program.

Save a child. Please act now.

---

'Help Give every Student and Teacher FREE resources for a world-class Moral Catholic Education'