Funds allocated in AIDS fight

The health departments of all the provinces have already spent or committed more than 50% of their total budgets on HIV/AIDS programmes.

This was the finding at a meeting held by Dr Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, Minister of Health, and the nine MECs for health in Johannesburg at the weekend.

A spokesperson for the department of health yesterday told The Citizen 50% of the total budget was an acceptable level of spending for this time of the financial year. Almost every province is set to exhaust its allocations by the end of the year and they are confident programme objectives will be met.

According to Sibani Mngadi, spokesperson for the Minister of Health, provinces have gone ahead and spent on HIV/AIDS programmes using money allocated for other budget items already available within the department.

The idea is to implement and keep programmes running and reconcile funds for budgetary purposes later.

Mr Mngadi said this was the main reason why Idasa earlier this month made wrong conclusions about how much money has actually been spent and committed to HIV/AIDS programmes.

Certain allocations including that of the integrated HIV/AIDS strategy were finalised only in the middle of the financial year making full disbursement difficult, said Mr Mngadi. These funds were rolled over to the next financial year and are being spent, he said.

Source: The Citizen, 19 November 2001