Only 350 of South Africa's 3 million HIV patients have had to fall back on last-resort treatment because they are resistant to standard treatments. So said the deputy director of the Wits Reproductive Health and HIV Institute, Francois Venter, in response to global reports that resistance to HIV drugs is on the rise in Africa.According to a study published in the Lancet Infectious Diseases Journal, 60% of 2000 HIV patients in sub-Saharan Africa, tested because they had failed to respond adequately to tenofovir - one of the most commonly used antiretrovirals - had developed resistance to it.Researchers at University College London said the study could mean that, after a year of treatment, up to 15% of people in sub-Saharan Africa and 10% in South Africa were resistant to the drug.But the director of the Centre for the Aids Programme of Research in SA, Salim Karim, said resistance to antiretrovirals was not high."If you look for drug resistance in people whose treatment is failing, which is what the researchers did, you will find it."Karim said less than 1% of 10,000 people treated by the centre were resistant to standard HIV drugs...