9 March 2007
The National Health Council (NHC), made up of the Minister, Deputy Minister
and MECs for Health from all provinces, received a presentation in Johannesburg
today on the draft National Strategic Plan for HIV and AIDS and Sexually
Transmitted Infections (STIs) for 2007-2011.
The NHC is encouraged by the significant progress that has been made by the
Task Team in further developing the Strategic Plan. The Task team is made up of
people with different expertise in the area of HIV and AIDS from government and
civil society
We believe that the spirit of renewed partnership amongst all role-players
in the response to HIV and AIDS has assisted the Task Team to work with vigour
to meet their deadline.
The deadline was to have a final draft Strategic Plan ready for presentation
at the National Consultative Conference that will be held at Birchwood Hotel in
Boksburg from 14 to 15 March. The conference, which will be addressed by the
Deputy President Ms Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, will bring together about 500
representatives of various stakeholders in the area of HIV and AIDS.
We have organised this conference - in addition to various sectoral summits
that have been held - to ensure that every stakeholder has an opportunity to
make an input into the development of this Plan. We have gone through this
extensive consultation process to ensure that all of us as a nation take
ownership of the final document that gets adopted by the new South African
National AIDS Council.
What we are developing is a country plan and therefore it should encompass,
as much as possible, inputs from all role-players. It should also enjoy our
collective commitment as various sectors in contributing to its successful
implementation.
The primary goal of the Plan is to reduce the rate of new HIV infections and
mitigate the impact of AIDS on individuals, families and communities. It has
four key priority areas which are:
* prevention
* treatment, care and support
* monitoring, evaluation and research
* as well as human and legal rights.
On prevention, our aim is to achieve a 50% reduction rate of new infections
by 2011. To achieve this, we need to intensify the implementation of prevention
interventions aimed at changing behaviour and reduce sexual transmission.
We have already made significant progress in expanding services for
prevention of mother to child transmission of HIV. To date, 80% of primary
healthcare facilities (3 382 out of 3 663) are providing the services and our
target is to reach 100% by the end of 2007.
We intend to provide an appropriate package of treatment, care and support
services to at least 80% of people living with HIV and their families by 2011.
This package includes:
* counselling and testing services as an entry point
* healthy lifestyle interventions including nutritional support
* treatment of opportunistic infections
* and antiretroviral therapy.
The Plan will include a framework for monitoring and evaluation which should
measure our collective progress in the implementation of the Plan. In this area
of research, the Plan also supports ethical scientific research into additional
tools for the response to HIV and AIDS including vaccines, microbicides and
traditional medicines.
As the NHC, we believe that the draft National Strategic Plan presented to
us this morning provides a sound basis for a fruitful discussion amongst
stakeholders at the national consultative conference next week.
Mr Jeff Radebe
Acting Minister of Health
Issued by: Department of Health
9 March 2007
