Decades of under-investment in people and systems have left a poorly managed medicine supply chain that frequently fails patients IT’S a cold, overcast Monday morning and community health-care worker Enock Moware is trying to find out whether an HIV-positive woman has managed to find nevirapine syrup for her baby. She was turned away from the Khothalang clinic near Virginia in the Free State three weeks ago because there was no stock.After a few hours he tracks down the baby’s worried parents and the news isn’t good: a nurse has told them the medicine still isn’t available and there is no indication of when new supplies will arrive. Nor does she suggest an alternative facility. Without a twice-daily dose of the syrup, the breast-fed nine-month-old baby is at grave risk of HIV infection."The situation here is horrible," says Moware (29), who has been working unpaid since April, when he lost his job with a nongovernmental organisation that ran out of funding. "Patients are defaulting ...
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