Stop Stock Outs consortium calls on Department of Health to face reality and end stock outs
28 November
JOHANNESBURG - The success and integrity of South Africa's massive HIV programme is threatened by an invisible and insidious reality: crisis-level stock outs of life-saving medicines which have affected one in five facilities serving 420,000 of the 2.4 million people who rely on public health services for their antiretroviral treatment (ART).
20% of the 2,139 health facilities responding to the first and largest ever national survey of its kind - conducted by the Stop Stock Outs Project during September and October 2013 - reported ARV and/or TB medicine stock outs or shortages. The sheer scale of the problem shows stock outs to be one of the principal barriers to maintaining an effective ART programme in South Africa.
"For people on ART who are forced to interrupt treatment and are left without medicine, this situation is nothing short of a national and provincial crisis, felt on a very personal level. The extent of medicine shortages, especially ARVs, is significant and far beyond previous estimations. In six out of nine provinces over 17% of responding facilities said they were affected," said Anele Yawa, national chairperson of the Treatment Action Campaign.