Speech delivered by the Honourable Sheila Sethole on the occasion of COSAS HIV and AIDS Awareness Campaign Holiday Inn - Polokwane

26 November 2004

 Programme Director
Leadership and membership of COSAS
Honoured guests
Ladies and Gentlemen

The World Health Organisation declared the first World Aids Day in 1998. Since then the 1st December has become one of the World’s largest and most successful commemorative days.

We celebrate and commemorate World AIDS Day this year under the theme “South Africans caring together for women and children.”

We are called upon to focus all our energies to reverse the impact of HIV and AIDS on women and children.We do this in recognition of the fact that they are particularly vulnerable to HIV infection and the socio - economic effects of AIDS.

The celebration of this year should help us promote the role of women and children in tackling the epidemic.

It must help distigmatize the disease, encouraging those infected, particularly women and girls to tell their stories.

At the same time we must ensure that we raise to high levels and highlight the impact that HIV and AIDS has on the most vulnerable members of our society.

Over the past ten years government has adopted various pieces of legislations and created various institutions all aimed at pushing back the frontiers of poverty while at the same time turning the tide against the epidemic.

So we must therefore ensure that as we celebrate and rejoice we also ensure that national policies and responses focus on women and children infected and affected with the disease.

This will help increase the self-esteem of women, especially those vulnerable to or infected with HIV.

The message that we must sent from this conference must be that high risk-behaviour of others make women and children vulnerable to the disease.

At an extreme, such risk behaviour leads to unwanted pregnancies among the teenage girls. The adverse effects of these are that it has a potential to transmit the disease.

We must therefore as partners raise awareness and provide education to young girls. In this we will be contributing other efforts to reduce their vulnerability to HIV and AIDS.

Recently the National department of Health conducted and released findings of a survey of 2003.

The report provides information on HIV and Syphilis prevalence among pregnant women attending antenatal care in public health institutions.

The findings estimate that in our country 5, 6 million individuals have acquired the HIV infection, with women being the hardest hit (3.1 million).

While the prevalence rates remain high the epidemic is beginning to stabilize and has not yet begun to decline.

In terms of prevalence among the various age cohorts, there has been a constant decline of prevalence among teenagers (15,8%) with the age group 25-29 recording higher rates.

The maturity of the epidemic varies across the provinces. Our province remains the third lowest with a prevalence rate of 17.5% after Northern and Western Cape.

A high prevalence rate was observed in Kwazulu Natal (37.5%), Mpumalanga (32.6%), followed by Free State (30.1%), Gauteng (29.6%) and Eastern Cape (27.1%)

An interesting element in this report is the prevalence rate among the teenagers, among you, members of COSAS.

As we said earlier theme has been a remarkable decline of prevalence among the teenagers.

This is an area that falls squarely in the hands of COSAS and other organisations lobbying for youth development and empowerment.

Government welcome the initiative taken by COSAS, SADTU, Department of Health, Department of Education, NGO’s and the University of the Western Cape, to respond to the epidemic.

We appreciate the work that COSAS is doing in terms of raising awareness among the youth, particularly because the figures as indicated above require urgent attention by everybody if the battle against the disease is to be won.

On its part government is increasingly strengthening and providing integrated and comprehensive health care services to mitigate the impact of the disease.

The epidemic has the potential to undermine and reverse the human development gains across the country.

Strategies such as the comprehensive HIV and AIDS Care, Management, and Treatment Plan, which is making a difference in the fight against the disease, need to be supported by all sectors to improve the health status of our people.

As part of implementing this programme government has accredited various sites in the country, to provide treatment. In this province 8 sites have been accredited.

This is a clear indication by government to commit and pump more resources in the infrastructure needed for universal access to services to deal with the scourge comprehensively.

Together we must raise to higher levels, large scale media, information and education campaign, tailored specifically to vulnerable groups.

The core of our plan to mitigate the effects of HIV and AIDS remain prevention of infection, aimed at changing sexual behaviour and promotion of healthy lifestyles, encouraging –delayed engagement of sexual activity among the youth, controlling and treating opportunistic and infectious diseases, expanding VCT campaign, widespread and consistent use to condoms and caring those infected.

At the centre of this campaign to totally control and roll back the epidemic is partnership with various stakeholders, because the effects of the epidemic manifest themselves in a multitude of ways.

The fight against HIV and AIDS can only be won when grassroots organizations are mobilised.

The absence of these much-needed representatives of civil society constitutes a major institutional gap in the fight against HIV and AIDS.

Government will continue to support and cooperate with the private sector, Faith - Based Organisations, NGO’s and people living with HIV and AIDS and make use of their experience and advice in formulating and implementing prevention and care policies.

We will work with everybody to build conditions for change. This requires information, leadership and inclusion. It requires action across all sectors. Through this partnership victory is certain.

We wish COSAS all the best in its endeavour to roll back the disease.

Thank you

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