After HIV, a New Battle: South African Doctor Turns His Attention to Addiction

South African physician Dr Hermann Reuter, once celebrated for his pioneering work treating HIV in the early 2000s in Cape Town and the rural Eastern Cape, has turned his attention to what he considers the country’s most pressing but neglected health crisis: substance abuse.

According to AllAfrica, journalist Sue Segar spent time with Reuter at his current base in George, a coastal city in the Western Cape’s Garden Route, to learn about his shift in focus. Reuter, who treated patients during one of the darkest chapters of South Africa’s HIV epidemic, now believes addiction is the biggest battle facing the country’s health system in the wake of that pandemic.

South Africa has long carried one of the highest HIV burdens in the world. The antiretroviral treatment programme, dramatically expanded across the 2000s and 2010s, has helped millions of South Africans live longer, healthier lives. Reuter’s career has tracked that transformation, moving from the desperate early days when treatment was scarce to a healthcare environment in which HIV is increasingly managed as a chronic condition.

He now argues that substance abuse has quietly taken over as the next great public health challenge, affecting individuals, families and communities across the country. Reuter’s work in George places him in a region of the Western Cape that, like many parts of South Africa, has grappled with the social and economic consequences of addiction, including its links to crime, family breakdown and unemployment.

Reuter continues to advocate for greater awareness and resources to tackle what he describes as an ignored crisis. His transition from HIV care to addiction medicine reflects a broader debate within South Africa’s medical community about how to allocate attention and funding as the country confronts a changing landscape of public health threats.

Sources

This report was written from coverage published by the following news organisations. Follow the links for the original reporting.

• AllAfrica — South Africa: Dr Hermann Reuter Says the Biggest Battle After HIV in SA Is Addiction – and It Is Being Ignored