SPOTLIGHT: After HIV, addiction is SA’s biggest battle and it’s being ignored
Dr Hermann Reuter did pioneering work treating HIV in the early 2000s in Cape Town and in the rural Eastern Cape. Today, his focus is substance abuse, which he believes is the country’s biggest health issue after HIV. Spotlight spent time with him to learn about his work in the Garden Route city of George.
Dr. Hermann Reuter, a pioneering HIV treatment specialist in Cape Town and the Eastern Cape, now concentrates on substance abuse in George, a Garden Route city in the Western Cape. He believes addiction is South Africa's most pressing health crisis following HIV. In his small consulting room, Reuter treats Jodie Fonseca, a 37-year-old heroin addict with a 20-year history of substance use disorder.
Reuter issues her medication and is assisted by volunteer behavioural change counsellor Brian Faul, who has been sober for 26 years. A line of roughly 30 people forms outside the room, all seeking help for substance use disorders. Reuter offers outpatient services through the NGO Sahara, which he founded five years ago, providing free medical-assisted rehabilitation and counselling in George, where such services are currently unavailable in public healthcare facilities.
Fonseca, a mother of three, moved from Johannesburg to George in search of a better heroin addiction treatment, describing the clinic's services as a "godsend."
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