The Democratic Alliance (DA) welcomes the relaunch of the Tuberculosis (TB) Caucus in the Mpumalanga Legislature today, but remains deeply concerned that the Mpumalanga Department of Health (DoH) is still unable to locate tens of thousands of people who require antiretroviral (ARV) treatment.

“The DA is submiting parliamentary questions to Mpumalanga Health MEC Sasekani Manzini asking her to explain why the department has not effectively tracked and re-engaged patients who should be on ARV therapy and why it has failed to meet its own HIV and TB targets,” said Bosman Grobler: MPL – DA Spokesperson on Health: Mpumalanga Legislature

In February 2025 the Mpumalanga DoH joined the national “Closing the GAP” campaign to trace people who had tested HIV-positive but were not receiving treatment and to find those who had defaulted on treatment. At that time, 134,243 patients required engagement, re-engagement or retention in care.

• According to the DoH’s 2025/2026 Fourth Quarter Report, 15 months later only 72,124 (54%) of those patients had been found. That leaves 62,199 people still unaccounted for. The department has extended its deadline to trace these patients to December 2026.

HIV/AIDS and TB remain the leading causes of death in Mpumalanga. The DA believes the DoH’s weak, inflexible initiatives are failing to meet the evolving needs of patients, contributing to poor prevention and treatment outcomes.

• The DoH’s report shows the department did not meet 2025/2026 treatment and prevention targets for HIV/AIDS and TB. Although 95% of adults who tested HIV-positive reportedly began treatment, only 70% were retained.

Child treatment targets were also missed. The department aimed to initiate 849 HIV-positive children on ARVs in 2025/2026 but managed only 341. The report acknowledges the lack of a reliable system to follow up HIV-exposed infants at 10 weeks, 6 months and 18 months, delaying diagnosis and treatment.

• The DoH admits it is not doing enough to trace children under five who need TB treatment. Implementation of targeted universal testing and treatment (TUTT) for TB is described as inadequate, contributing to missed TB prevention and treatment targets.

Call to action
The DA calls on MEC Sasekani Manzini and the Mpumalanga DoH to:

• Deploy all available resources immediately to find the remaining missing patients and re-engage defaulters.
• Strengthen systems for follow-up of HIV-exposed infants and for initiating and retaining children on ARV treatment.
• Urgently scale up effective, flexible community-based tracing and retention strategies and improve TUTT implementation for TB.

The DA supports the renewed focus on TB through the caucus relaunch, but warns that without rapid, decisive action to locate and retain people on treatment, both HIV and TB outcomes in Mpumalanga will continue to deteriorate.