The Health Ministry on Wednesday commended the deputy chairperson of the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) for her address to the United Nations General Assembly about the work being done in South Africa to provide HIV/Aids treatment.
Ministry spokesperson Sibani Mngadi said Khensani Mavasa, who is living with HIV, highlighted the challenges of poverty and the work being done in South Africa to make HIV/Aids treatment available.
”She acknowledged that efforts have been made in her home town in Limpopo, as well as in other parts of South Africa to make the HIV/Aids prevention, care and treatment programme available,” said Mngadi.
He said that Mavasa, who addressed the conference as a representative of the International Women’s Health Organisation after the TAC rejected an invitation to be part of a delegation from South Africa, contradicted the statement by TAC chairperson Zachie Achmat that the government lied to the UN about its treatment programme.
”The spirit of her statement to UN General Assembly Special session on HIV/Aids was in contrast to an unbecoming behaviour of TAC chairman, Zachie Achmat, during the TAC march in Pretoria on Tuesday.”
During the march Achmat said that the government lied that SA had the biggest treatment programme in the world.
”The truth is that we have the biggest need in the world and we are not meeting that need,” Achmat said.
Achmat said truth, leadership and science were at the core of appropriately dealing with the pandemic in the country.
Amongst others, the memorandum called for an end to ”state-endorsed” denial on the disease, and for President Thabo Mbeki and the health minister to commit to ending what it termed unscientific messages about the disease.
It also wanted the law to be enforced against those taking advantage of the vulnerability of people with HIV/Aids.
Social issues, such as gender-based violence and the legacy of the migrant-labour system in the mining industry, were also highlighted by the memorandum as requiring government’s attention.
The health department at first refused a place in the official South African delegation to the conference to the TAC and the Aids Law Project. The department later extended an invitation to the TAC, which the TAC turned down because other pressure groups were still barred from the delegation.
Meanwhile, Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang said she was pleased that prevention was at the centre of discussions.
The minister was speaking at a roundtable discussion on Wednesday at the the UN meeting.
During the discussions she urged the UN to build from commitments made in 2001.
”The 2001 declaration on HIV/Aids acknowledges prevention as the mainstay of the response and recognises that poverty, underdevelopment and illiteracy are among the contributing factors to the spread of HIV,” Tshabalala-Msimang said.
She said some of the challenges faced in the prevention of HIV/Aids included sustainable financing of HIV/Aids programmes, overcoming the stigma and discrimination and a shortage of health workers.
Governments and civil society should be encouraged to work together to overcome these challenges, Tshabalala-Msimang said. – Sapa