The announcement by Kgalema Motlanthe, the Deputy President, on 12 August now allows for any HIV patient with a CD4 count of 350 or below, a measure of the immune system’s strength, to access ARVs with immediate effect, according to the South African National AIDS Council (SANAC) spokesman Junaid Seedat.
Until now HIV patients had to wait until their CD4 counts were below 200. The World Health Organization recommended the higher threshold in November 2009.
South African HIV activists became frustrated when a few months later, the government updated its national HIV treatment guidelines to allow only HIV-positive pregnant mothers and those co-infected with tuberculosis (TB) to access treatment at the WHO-recommended CD4 levels.
The government, which continues to fund about 80 percent of HIV public sector treatment, cited financial concerns and fears that large-scale earlier treatment would overwhelm the already overburdened health systems."
