Challenges to the success of HIV and tuberculosis care and treatment in the public health sector in South Africa

Abstract

The escalating human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and tuberculosis (TB) epidemics have had a significant impact on public health services in resource-limited settings. The province of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa is estimated to have one of the greatest TB/HIV coinfection burdens on the African continent, coupled with historically low TB treatment success rates. In May 2004, the South African government began providing antiretroviral therapy (ART) for HIV-infected individuals within the public sector. As in many counties, this HIV treatment program was established in parallel with an existing TB treatment service. In 2005, the Integration of TB in Education and Care for HIV/AIDS (iTEACH) Program was launched in KwaZulu-Natal at Edendale Hospital. The goal of iTEACH was to identify barriers to effective treatment and develop support interventions to enable rapid expansion of access to ART and improve ART and TB treatment outcomes within the district served by this facility. In the present article, we discuss challenges to the delivery of TB and HIV care by these separate treatment programs, as well as opportunities to improve both TB treatment and ART outcomes through lessons learned during ART scale-up in the context of the HIV and TB coepidemics.