Press Statement on behalf of Sonke Gender Justice Network and People Opposed to Women Abuse (POWA)

The 53rd session of the annual United Nations Commission on the Status of Women is focused on the theme “The equal sharing of responsibilities between women and men, including caregiving in the context of HIV and AIDS”.

The meeting provides a critical opportunity for governments and civil society to generate proposals that might address the enormous and debilitating physical and emotional burden of care borne by women and girls across the world, including especially in countries which are hard hit by HIV and AIDS, like South Africa.
South Africa’s 2007-2011 National Strategic Plan on HIV and AIDS includes mention of many important strategies to reduce the total burden by increasing access to effective prevention and treatment and alleviating the burden of care by increasing the numbers of male care givers. The NSP is widely recognised as international best practice and did much to restore South Africa’s reputation in the international community after years of AIDS denialism within the Presidency and the Department of Health.

The NSP sets clear and ambitious prevention and treatment goals aimed at reducing the care burden. The NSP commits government to 1) “reducing the number of new HIV infections by 50% and 2) reducing “HIV and AIDS morbidity and mortality as well as its socioeconomic impacts by providing appropriate packages of treatment, care and support to 80% of HIV positive people and their families by 2011”. In addition, it resolves to “improve quality of life for children and adults with HIV and AIDS requiring terminal care and strengthen the health system and remove barriers to access”.

The NSP also includes explicit goals to increase men’s active participation in the provision of home and community based care and resolves to “recruit and train new community care givers, with emphasis on men”, and sets a numeric target of increasing men’s involvement by 20% by 2011.

Despite the ambitious targets set in the NSP, prevention and treatment efforts lag far behind schedule. According to reports released by the South African National AIDS Council “there has been an 87% rise in the number of deaths reported between 1997 and 2005 and deaths among those aged 25-49 has risen by 169%, surging from contributing 30% of all deaths in 1997 to 42% by 2005. This can only be explained by the HIV epidemic.” The document also reports that only 28 percent of people who need access to treatment currently have it and this, the report points out, is “below the global average for low- and middle-income countries”.”

The UN CSW offers an opportunity for South Africa to work with UN agencies, civil society and other UN signatory countries to seek bold solutions to prevention and treatment efforts and thereby reducing the burden of AIDS related care.
Sadly, the pronouncements made on behalf of the South African government delegation to the 2009 UN CSW by Manto Tshabalala Msimang, the former Minister of Health and now the Minister in the Presidency, have once again undermined South Africa’s credibility in the international community and stand in stark contradiction to the priorities laid out in the NSP.
The issues raised in her various presentations undermine the consensus government and civil society reached in the National Strategic Plan on HIV and AIDS. Minister Tshabalala-Msimang’s repeated statements at CSW calling for additional research on alternative and traditional remedies and for “pharmacovigilance” and drug surveillance distract from the important issues being discussed at the CSW and represent a lost opportunity to focus on the key issues in the NSP related to the care economy.

When senior government representatives imply that anti-retroviral therapies are not safe they sow confusion and compromise our efforts to ensure that people access and adhere to treatment. When they do this, they contribute to illness and death and compound the burden of care carried by women and girls. The goal of this year’s CSW is to reduce the burden of care on women. As they have on many occasions in the past, Minister Tshabalala Msimang’s comments threaten to undermine this goal and to once again undermine the credibility of the South African government’s commitment to addressing HIV and AIDS.

We call on the South African government to clarify its position on treatment roll-out and explain why a senior representative of the government continues to focus on drug safety even though the NSP makes it clear that this is not an issue of contention, saying “Great emphasis has been placed on ensuring that new drugs are safe - both in the mainstream and traditional health sectors.”

We also call on government to ensure that all efforts are made to ensure access to treatment in the Free State where stock-outs continue to cost people their lives.
The minister of health should be strengthened in her efforts to advance the NSP and to deliver on the clear commitments it has made.

We further encourage the government to translate into action the agreed upon conclusions arrived at the 2009 CSW session in line with the 20070-2011 National Strategic Plan paying particular attention to the following three priority areas:
1) strengthening the capacity of the health sector;
2) implementing effective HIV prevention and treatment strategies and
3) implementing the various strategies South Africa has committed to increase the involvement of men and boys in achieving gender equality, including full participation in AIDS related home and community based care.