"Government assurances that the scaling back of the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) program in South Africa (SA) will be carefully managed to protect patients are welcome, but ... [t]he reality is that the Department of Health is struggling to cope with severe medical staff shortages, financial resources that never seem to stretch far enough, inadequate infrastructure and maintenance programs, and administrative bottlenecks," a Business Day editorial states. Though the reworking of PEPFAR funding will take place over five years "and does not entail the complete loss" of funding, "the shortfall will have to come from somewhere," the editorial says, adding, "It will be tragic if, just as we are starting to see light at the end of the long, dark tunnel of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in SA, the gains of the past few years were to be reversed due to the loss of critical foreign funding and the government's lack of capacity to plug the gap."