Cape Town - A new health campaign launched by the Western Cape government seeks to assist those living with HIV.
The province wants to reinvigorate and strengthen its response to the HIV epidemic, through its U=U campaign, launched at Christ The Redeemer Church Hall in Westridge, Mitchells Plain, yesterday.
Premier Alan Winde, Health MEC Nomafrench Mbombo, Health Head Dr Keith Cloete, Police Oversight and Community Safety MEC Reagen Allen, and US Consul-General Todd Haskell attended the event along with residents, health and civic groups.
Mitchells Plain Community Health Centre Family physician Dr Ronald Kroukamp said: “Our facility pre-Covid, we were seeing about 30 000 people per month and we were averaging about 1 000 feet within the facility per day.
“We’ve taken a lot of learnings from what happened during Covid-19 and we’ve learnt to use alternative means of rendering a service. The medication pick-up points have been one of those big drives, but also creating these Wellness Hubs.”
The Wellness Hub, the second in Mitchells Plain, will serve as a clinic from the site every Tuesday from 9am-1pm.
“There’s no congestion, it’s an easy pick-up and you can get your chronic care or other services like family planning, pap smears, immunisation, chronic care as well as your acute visits, and we’ve added oral health,” said Kroukamp.
South African National Aids Council Treatment technical head Mandisa Dukashe has been living with HIV for 20 years.
U=U was a global campaign denoting an undetectable viral load which was untransmittable (U=U), she said.
“My husband is HIV-negative, we’ve got children. Which is proof that undetectable viral load does work in terms of eliminating transmission. Twenty years later he is still HIV-negative and my daughters are HIV-negative.
“When a person has an undetectable viral load in our context in South Africa, a viral load that is less than 50 copies – we’re speaking about people who are HIV-positive who are on treatment – they cannot transmit HIV to their babies.
“We are promoting treatment uptake, which means people with HIV must start to take treatment and must remain on treatment so that they can achieve an undetectable viral load.
“As they take treatment and get an undetectable status, it's personally benefiting them because they will live longer, be healthy, be stronger, they will achieve anything like an HIV negative person.”
The campaign aims to increase testing services and create demand for treatment. In South Africa, there are two million people living with HIV who are not on treatment, Dukashe said.
In the province, 92% of people living with HIV were aware of their status but only 59% were on ART.
The Department of Health and Wellness expressed concern over the high number of people, approximately 273 949 people living with HIV who were currently not on treatment.
Mbombo said: “Following the Covid-19 pandemic, many of our residents were not able to continue their treatment which placed their health at risk. Despite this, our resources and services can now be reprioritised towards addressing a virus that is now endemic in our communities.
“It is crucial that we all work together to ensure that we maximise access to ARVs and address the stigmas associated with HIV, as any person one knows could be HIV positive. It is up to us to end the spread of HIV in our communities through proper collaboration with all stakeholders.”