Although National Treasury allocated an extra R754.5m into the health budget in September, this might not be enough to fund HIV/AIDS programmes as the money might be used to pay off massive provincial debts, reported Business Day (6 October 2025).
R590.4m of the R754.5m was intended for conditional grants for provinces, specifically to fund HIV/AIDS programmes; R132m for the SA Medical Research Council’s research; and R32.1m for the National Health Insurance.
However, health advocacy organisation Section27 told Parliament that the combined new funding from the Treasury and PEPFAR (R2bn) “represents barely more than a third of the originally promised R6.3bn”.
Meanwhile, a recent presentation by the National Health Department, revealed that collective accruals totalled more than R24bn as of the end of March 2025.