The province has seen an increase in the number of people on antiretroviral therapy who stayed the course, the department of health said.
These include patients in the province’s rural areas.
The department believes this has improved treatment outcomes.
This, according to the department, can be attributed to its initiative, Operation Phuthuma.
The operation includes a heightened level of patient monitoring, including the use of electronic records, phone call reminders to patients and follow-up reminders.
In February 2023, about 74% of patients who took HIV medication remained on the treatment and the number has since gone up to 84% across the province.
These are the people who have not stopped taking their medication.
The initiative, which was rolled out nationally in 2019, is aimed at improving healthcare service delivery and addressing challenges in the public healthcare system.
Operation Phuthuma’s effectiveness in the province was under review at Hotel Osner in East London on Wednesday.
It targeted struggling areas, including three centres in OR Tambo and one in Nelson Mandela Bay.
Eastern Cape provincial Operation Phuthuma leader Busisiwe Jele said one of their major initiatives was encouraging patients to take their medication to suppress HIV.
She said this would help avoid a number of deaths caused by the virus.
“This initiative is a quality improvement strategy, we identify parts [of the province] where we are not doing well, focus and prioritise them,” she said.
Jele said the goal was to ensure patients’ needs were taken care of.
“We ensure that they remain in care so we can achieve our outcome and our outcome is viral load suppression.
“We then have fewer people getting sick, all provinces have to prioritise it.
“We also wanted to identify from other programmes ... at the centre we want to improve patient care,” she said.
She said about 171 health facilities in the Eastern Cape were implementing the strategy.
“What we have seen ... is that the data is telling a good story in terms of performance.
“We are not yet where we [want to be] but we are heading in the right direction, it’s much better than where we are coming from.
“We have identified that we have a problem with record keeping of data, the space [healthcare facilities] becomes an issue, those are [some] of the challenges.”
Tebogo Maomela, from the national department of health’s monitoring and evaluation directorate, said: “The Eastern Cape [like other provinces] had poor-performing facilities [in retaining patients on ARVs] ,we took the top 100 and then introduced the strategy,” Maoemela said.
Nosipho Bubu, a health worker from the OR Tambo district, said the initiative has helped them.
“The initiative managed to help us find direction, we managed to address the cause because we had been addressing symptoms.”
Bubu said patients were consistently reminded to fetch their medication.
“We now call to remind them about their appointments and do follow-ups, if they don’t come we try again ...we manage them daily,” she said.
Dispatch LIVE
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.