Health minister Aaron Motsoaledi is to be asked to account to parliament for the fact that two of the companies awarded government contracts to supply Aids drugs have gone into business rescue.
South Africa has the world’s biggest HIV burden, with an estimated 8-million people living with the disease, and buys about a fifth of the world’s antiretroviral medicines. About 5.6-million HIV patients were on treatment by the end of September, Treasury documents show.
Last week Business Day reported that Barrs and Innovata, which between them won roughly a quarter of the tender to supply the three-in-one pills taken by most of South Africa’s HIV patients, failed to notify the health department that they went into business rescue just days after the tender period began on December 1.
Now parliament wants the minister to explain how the situation arose and what it means for patients, said the chair of parliament’s portfolio committee on health, Faith Muthambi.
“We need to get to the bottom of this … as a matter of urgency,” she said on Monday.
“We cannot have a situation where patients default,” she said. A break in HIV treatment is dangerous because it increases the risk of developing drug resistance.
After a request from the DA’s Michele Clark, Muthambi said she would be writing to the minister to ask him to appear before the committee as a matter of urgency.
Clark said she had questions about the due diligence conducted on the companies that had won contracts and why “very reputable” companies such as Cipla and Adcock Ingram had been left out.
The total Aids drug tender, which runs for three years, is worth an estimated R15.5bn. The core contracts to supply monthly and three-monthly packs of the three-in-one pills, which contain tenofovir, lamivudine and dolutegravir (TLD), are the biggest by volume and value, and are worth an estimated R12.6bn.
When the tender award was announced in August 2025, several local pharmaceutical manufacturers that had previously supplied the state with TLD were excluded. They include Adcock Ingram, Cipla and Sun Pharmaceuticals (formerly Sisonke).
On Friday the health department sought to reassure HIV patients that there was no imminent danger of medicine shortages. It said provincial health departments had sufficient stock to cover three months of demand and the tender had deliberately split contracts between multiple suppliers to mitigate the risk of any of them being unable to fulfil their commitments.
“The department is alive to the consequences of the country running out of ARVs and will never allow this to happen,” said the department’s spokesperson Foster Mohale.
“Uninterrupted access to life-saving HIV treatment remains a national priority and all measures are in place to ensure that patients continue to receive their medicines without disruption,” he said.
Aspen, Emcure, Innovata, Barrs, MacLeods, Viatris and Aurobindo won a share of both the monthly and the three-monthly contracts, while Pharma Dynamics won a share of only the monthly pack contract. Barrs and Innovata won a combined 28.76% of the contract for three-monthly packs and 24.49% of the one for monthly packs.
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.