South Africa's Aids action plan
6 December 2006
South Africa has announced a new draft action plan that aims to halve the rate of new HIV infections in the country by 2011 and provide treatment, care and support to at least 80% of people living with HIV/Aids and their families.
The broad framework document, released on Friday - World Aids Day - by Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, marks a significant change in South African government policy on the epidemic.
The government worked closely with civil society groupings in drafting the plan, which will be overseen by a beefed-up SA National Aids Council, headed by Mlambo-Ngcuka.
The plan - which will be finalised by March 2007 - places a new emphasis on treatment and prevention, and makes no mention of the dietary recommendations previously cited by the health ministry as key to fighting Aids.
Behaviour of young people 'crucial'
Speaking in Nelspruit in Mpumalanga province on Friday,
Mlambo-Ngcuka said that reducing the rate of HIV transmission among young people would be crucial to the success of the plan, since the "future course of the epidemic hinges in many respects on the behaviour young people adopt and maintain."
"Younger people should delay their sexual debut," Mlambo-Ngcuka said, adding: "And when people do become sexually active, they should use condoms consistently. We should all avoid having multiple and concurrent sexual partners."
The plan also aims to reduce the HIV infection rate among children under the age of five by expanding the prevention of mother-to-child transmission programme and providing antiretroviral therapy for pregnant women.
On treatment, the aim is to increase the reach of the country's antiretroviral treatment programme from the current estimated one-quarter of HIV-positive people to at least 80% of people living with HIV/Aids as well as their families.
In order to lessen the impact of Aids on familes and
communities, the plan also aims to expand community-home-based care and palliative care programmes, as well as social safety network programmes for orphans and vulnerable children.
'A formidable partnership'
"Nothing less than a formidable partnership between government and civil society can assist us to achieve our goal of reversing the tide of this pandemic," Mlambo-Ngcuka said.
"Too many people have been infected and too many have died, but if we work together, Aids can be beaten."
Aids activists - including the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), previously one of the harshest critics of the government's approach to the epidemic - have welcomed the new plan.
"Government is saying at the highest level ... that HIV is an emergency, that it's a priority, that we need to scale up our treatment services for people, that we need to prevent HIV infections," said TAC executive member Mark Heywood.
"That type of language is a
language on which it's possible to work with government."
'Deep-rooted institutional problems'
The framework document states that HIV/Aids is one of the main challenges facing South Africa, which had an estimated 5.54-million people - 18.8% of the adult population - living with HIV in 2005.
"Although the rate of the increase in HIV prevalence has in past five years slowed down, the country is still to experience reversal of the trends," the document states. "There are still too many people living with HIV, too many still getting infected."
According to the document, the "immediate determinant of the spread of HIV relates to behaviours such as unprotected sexual intercourse, multiple sexual partners and some biological factors such as sexually transmitted infections."
However, the "fundamental drivers" of the epidemic in South Africa "are the more deep-rooted institutional problems of poverty, underdevelopment and the low status
of women, including gender-based violence, in society."
SouthAfrica.info reporter
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