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KZN hospitals flooded by AIDS
by Mokgadi Pela
2001-06-08

The SAMJ took a tour of the province of KwaZulu-Natal to assess the impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic on the provincial hospitals...

Public hospitals in KwaZulu-Natal are battling to cope with the HIV/AIDS human tide, according to the latest issue of the South African Medical Journal (SAMJ).

This follows an SAMJ tour throughout the province to assess the impact of the AIDS epidemic on healthcare delivery.

Doctors in at least two major hospitals, Edendale in Pietermaritzburg and King Edward in Durban, say between 55 percent and 65 percent of medical in-patients are HIV positive.

Beds at Northdale and Edendale and in several rural hospitals are at 120 percent over-capacity because of AIDS.

Greys and Edendale Hospital HIV/AIDS clinic chief Dr Paul Kocheleff says the tide of sick people now presenting itself at KwaZulu-Natal hospitals represents the 1994-95 HIV-positive prevalence figure of just 15 to 20 percent based on the estimated six-year silent incubation period of HIV.

Professor Alan Smith, head of the University of Natal's Nelson Mandela School of Medicine's virology department, said last year an estimated 36 percent of people in the province were HIV positive.

He says you do not need much imagination to picture the situation in another six or seven years, as the exponential increase will be huge.

A decade ago the HIV prevalence figure stood at 1,6 percent. Kocheleff estimates that AIDS will kill 400 000 in the province before 2006.

Smith's study of King Edward admissions shows that front 1995 to 1997 the HIV-positive percentage jumped from 19 to 34 percent.

From 1997 to 1998 HIV-positive patients admitted jumped from 39 to 53 percent. Last year 86 pet-cent of these were women in their 20s.

Source: Sowetan, 6 June 2001

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