Community members of all ages filled a marquee at the Isaac Wolfson Stadium in Kwazakhele on Saturday where the provincial department of health and the Eastern Cape Aids Council hosted a World Aids Day event.
The provincial event was held in the Bay after the city was identified in November to have a poor performance in terms of health indicators such as health screening and testing.
Eastern Cape premier and chair of the council Phumulo Masualle said the plan to fight the HIV/Aids pandemic was anchored on a 90-90-90 strategy.
This was to identify 90% of people living with HIV through testing, 90% of those tested people to then start anti-retroviral treatment and 90% of those on treatment to achieve viral load suppression, Masualle said.
“We want to encourage everyone to get tested so we can put them on treatment.”
Masualle expressed concern about the high number of patients who began treatment but then fell by the wayside.
The Eastern Cape has 43,831 of these “lost patients”, with the metro accounting for 8,912 – the most in the province.
“We are here to improve our efficacy so we can defeat this [virus] here in Nelson Mandela Bay and set an example of what we want to see all over the province,” Masualle said.
“We’d set ourselves a target of getting 10,000 [people] for testing in the province and 5,000 in the metro specifically. “That target has been met.” Stations were set up in Rosedale and Khayamnandi and elsewhere in the province as part of the health screening programme in November.
From November 7 to the end of the month, 8,000 people were tested in the Bay and 12,400 across the province.
Eastern Cape Aids Council secretariat head and programme manager Vuyisa Dayile said the department had set a target of finding 500 “lost” patients and had managed to find 384.
Of a silent protest by the EFF, Dayile said the department welcomed their concerns.
“The issue of the lack of medicine did not affect the Eastern Cape – there was a problem with ARVs nationally, where two plants in China which supplied SA closed.”
Dayile said the national department was looking to resolve the problem by January.