Cape Town — The Treasury has made significant additions to the government's budget for HIV/ AIDS programmes in anticipation of meeting its target of providing treatment to 80% of those in need by 2011.

Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan yesterday announced an extra R900m for providing AIDS drugs in state health facilities for the rest of this fiscal year. The money will help meet the R1bn shortfall acknowledged last month by Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi.

The Treasury declined to comment yesterday on progress in securing more donor funding for AIDS drugs. "We think the R900m is a very substantial allocation which will go a long way to addressing this (shortfall)," said the Treasury's director for health policy, Mark Bletcher.

The Treasury has also added R5,4bn to the HIV/AIDS conditional grant over the medium term, given an expected rise in demand for AIDS drugs. An extra R1,2bn is allocated in 2010-11, R1,8bn in 2011-12 and R2,4bn in 2012-13, taking the total allocations to R5,5bn, R6,4bn and R7,3bn respectively.

The Treasury said "treatment uptake will soon exceed more than 300000 entrants per year. By the end of March 2010 more than 900000 people will be receiving antiretroviral treatment."