Chairperson, Dr Nono Simelela
Deputy President of the Republic, Honourable Kgalema Motlanthe,
Minister of Health, Dr Aaron Motsoaledi,
Minister of Science and Technology, Ms Naledi Pandor,
Minister of Women, Children and People with Disabilities, Ms Lulu Xingwana,
Minister of Basic Education, Ms Angie Motshekga
Thank you for inviting me to participate in this summit. My brief contributions will focus on the necessity of a rights-based approach to treatment, care and prevention if we are to reach the goal of an HIV and AIDS free future.
Ladies and gentlemen, our dream of a society that is free from poverty and inequality will never be realised if we do not work together to eradicate HIV and AIDS as well as its accompanying ills such as Tuberculosis, poverty, stigma and discrimination.
Already, there are many health and social indicators where as a country we would have been doing much better if it was not for the impact of HIV and AIDS. I suppose the persistently high maternal mortality rate is an example of this, despite us having some of the best policies and laws in place to reduce maternal mortality.
That being said, at the recent High Level Meeting on HIV and AIDS in New York, South Africa was consistently singled out as a country that is now on track in relation to the prevention of new infections. That is because we have stepped up our treatment regime while still focusing on the importance of prevention.
The South African delegation was consistent in its message that our fight against AIDS is not one that seeks to foreground a treatment approach above a prevention based approach or vice versa. To beat HIV and AIDS, we need to do both. The United Nations AIDS (UNAIDS) campaign that speaks to zero new infections, zero deaths and zerodiscrimination must be the platform for our policies and strategies.
Ladies and gentlemen, I have the privilege of serving as the Co-Chair of the International Advisory Group (IAG) on HIV and Aids. At our meeting in Johannesburg in April this year, the International Advisory Group emerged with a clear consensus around the areas that underpin UNAIDS’s strategy for 2011 to 2015 , which are as I have just mentioned, the three zeroes to zero discrimination, zero deaths and zero new infections.
To this effect, the International Advisory Group, which is made up of governments, Civil Society and some private sector stakeholders from all regions of the world, developed the following statement: “No HIV response can be effective unless it combats discrimination and exclusion. Punitive laws and stigma against people living with HIV, men who have sex with men, transgender people, people who use drugs, sex workers and migrants undermine the programmes”.
This essentially emphasises the importance of human rights in saving lives and that the violation of such rights can serve as an impediment in our efforts to provide treatment, care and support. To advance human rights and gender equality in our response to the HIV pandemic, we must be intolerant of and wage a fight against violence on women and girls. In addition, society must never tolerate discrimination against gay and other men who have sex with men, and transgender people. At the same time, “parliamentarians, the judiciary, law enforcement, educators, media as well as civil and religious leaders should be mobilised to build a culture of non-discrimination, tolerance and respect.
When I say that human rights save lives, it means that we have to go beyond just paying lip service to the rights we have in our Constitution but actively work to ensure that all people in South Africa access those rights. In a generalised epidemic like we have, women especially young women carry the brunt of HIV and AIDS.
This means that women still are not able to negotiate safe sex in their intimate relationships and that women are still being exposed to HIV through sexual violence. In this context, women’s empowerment is not a nice-to-have right but is critical to saving their lives and it is vital for us to reach a goal of no new infections.
Similarly, the recent research reports that point out the high levels of infections amongst men who have sex with men in Soweto, is an indicator that such men still feel that they are not freely able to access prevention and treatment services. This, ladies and gentlemen, is due to continued discrimination and stigmatisation of same sex relationships in our country.
So despite their constitutional entitlements people are still being rendered vulnerable due to prejudice as well as discrimination and this prejudice is taking lives. So when we talk about zero discrimination its not just because of what we believe in at an ideological level but, the reality is, in the context of HIV and AIDS prevention, human rights does indeed, save lives.
Government and civil society need to engage in parallel advocacy work to embed a culture of human rights and zero discrimination so that all people are and feel safe. The results of these endeavours should be reflected in the kind of social and legal environment we create to enable access to HIV programmes. We must protect the human rights and dignity of all people if we are to effectively prevent the spread of HIV.
Ladies and gentlemen, our approach must also take into account that treatment is another form of prevention. While the issue of human rights to improve access to treatment lies mainly with the state, the Pharmaceutical Industry also needs to come to the fore on the issue of treatment. South Africa played a leading role together with India, Brazil and Thailand at the United Nations High Level Meeting to broker agreements around enforcing the TRIPS flexibilities.
In particular we stressed the point that all countries especially developing countries should have the rights to manufacture, import and export life saving drugs and this included Anti-Retrovirals (ARVs). These agreements laid the basis for the announcement made by the ANC around the possibility of a state owned pharmaceutical company to produce life saving ARVs at accessible prices. There is also potential of a similar initiative being set up in Mozambique by the government of Brazil.
These initiatives are important in the context where the global community has committed itself to treating 15 million people by 2015. About 9 million people that have been tested for HIV are still not on treatment globally. Of the approximately 6 million that are on treatment, nearly half of them are in South Africa. So aside from having 50 percent of the ARV global market, unless South Africa moves towards universal access to treatment, the global target will not be reached.
Combine this with emerging evidence that proper use of ARVs could be another tool in preventing the transmission of the virus, the future of prevention clearly needs to be linked to treatment. It is for this reason that the African National Congress (ANC) and government talk about measures to reduce the costs of treatment. The pharmaceutical industry is therefore urged to understand that they too can play an important role in saving people’s lives through participation in these endeavours and in this case, they would need to put people’s lives ahead of profit.
At the IAG meeting, prevention and treatment were termed “two sides of the same coin”. This is largely because treatment “has transformed AIDS from a death sentence into a challenge for lifelong care, giving hope, restoring productivity, and providing incentives for knowing your HIV status”.
At the same time, prevention has perhaps faltered a bit behind treatment because the causes of new infections, which are sexuality, gender inequalities, socio-economic disparities and drug use - are hard to talk about, and hard to change. Stigma around these issues continues to make it difficult for people to get support or services that can help in the prevention of new infections.
The message I want to put across is that personal or private approaches to morality cannot be used to increase people’s vulnerabilities and in this case, actually cause them illness or death. This is the message we took to the world through the IAG and it is a message that needs to ring very loudly throughout South Africa for our prevention programmes to be successful - Human Rights, Save Lives.
Our work towards prevention must seek to achieve the goal of reducing new sexual HIV infections by half, including among young people and men who have sex with men, by 2015. All new infections should also be prevented among people who inject drugs by this timeframe.
I must mention that South Africa is also committed towards ensuring that people living with HIV and households affected by HIV are considered in our social protection strategies and have access to essential care and support. In our context, this also covers child-headed households.
In conclusion, allow me to mention that solidarity is key towards the achievement of our international and national commitments towards an HIV free future. All sectors of our society need to act in unity against the pandemic. To borrow from the words of our great icon, Mr Nelson Mandela, I quote: “Aids is no longer a disease, but a human rights issue”.
Thank you
