With a long history of an AIDS crisis full of denial and ignorance, South Africa has finally decided to take on this epidemic with full force. In the past month of April the government has enabled over 500 hospitals and clinics to prescribe AIDS medications. The government has trained many nurses to be able to dispense this medicine in order to increase the possibility of the treatment of AIDS patients. The goal is to eventually have all 4,333 public clinics dispensing AIDS medications, and to do this, thousands of more nurses must be trained in this area. President Jacob Zuma has a goal of having 15 million people of the country's nearly 49 million people tested for HIV/AIDS by June of 2011. The South African Finance Ministry said they expect that the larger access to drugs will put nearly a million more people on AIDS treatment in the next few years, almost doubling the current case load. The US has always been a large contributor to this effort, and this year is no different with a large donation of $620 million. With this donation, along with many others, the budget is close to $1 billion for this year’s AIDS efforts, which make many scientists and doctors optimistic about the outcome of testing and treating AIDS in South Africa.
Submitted by: Katherine Conrad
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