With around 17% of the adult population being infected with HIV, everyone here is a member of the HIV team. There is however a dedicated unit providing HIV wellness care and in particular providing anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs). At September 2009, more than 4000 patients had joined the HIV wellness programme by first agreeing to test for HIV, joining their closest HIV support group and disclosing their status to the other members of the group. Over 2000 of these patients have been started ARVs while the remainder do not yet need the drugs. Madwaleni and its feeder clinics have no waiting list to start ARVs. Madwaleni is focused on running a a decentralised service to ensure that patients access HIV care and ARVs as close to their homes as possible. An adult HIV clinic, a paediatric HIV clinic and a preventing mother to child transmission (PMTCT) clinic are run weekly at Madwaleni. In addition, similar services are run weekly at the 7 feeder primary healthcare clinics. Members of the HIV support groups celebrating 2 years since
the first patient received ARV's (27/07/2007) |
