Today in Pholela the MEC for Health Dr Sibongiseni Dhlomo announced the readiness of the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Health to roll out the school health programme by December 2011.
Speaking during a stakeholder engagement in Pholela (Bulwer), in the midlands, he told the two hundred strong crowd of various stakeholders that “Unless we close the tap that leads to young girls to fall pregnant at an early age, and acquire HIV as well, we will not be able to put an end to the HIV scourge that seems to be taking away our young girls.”
The MEC was at Pholela Community Healthcare Centre together with the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) South African Representative Dr Stella Anyangwe, the Director of TB/HIV Care Association Professor Harry Hausler and the PEPFAR Liaison in KwaZulu-Natal Ms Chalone Savant to hand over four GeneXpert TB Diagnosis machines to the local hospitals and clinics. They also met various stakeholders where they engaged them on the health status in KwaZulu-Natal.
MEC Dhlomo was responding to questions following his speech on HIV prevalence and teenage pregnancy. He was asked about the amplification of family planning programmes to prevent the high teenage pregnancy rates in the province. He told the packed hall that one in ten of girls below the age of 18 are HIV positive.
“They also get an added burden of being pregnant at that young age. We know this because in the total number of deliveries anywhere in this country and province, ten per cent is by girls below the age of 18 years. We have a number of prevention programmes in place and as we all know, girls start having sex as early as twelve years of age.
"We are in the process of advertising posts for school nurses who will help in the implementation of reproductive health programmes in schools including the promotion of family planning.”
Dr Stella Anyembe of the WHO commended the South African government for having the largest HIV programme in the world with more than 1, 5 million people on the antiretroviral treatment (ART). She said “While South Africa has the large number of people with HIV, however, your government’s response is tremendous with the largest ART programme on earth.”
Enquiries:
Chris Maxon
Cell: 083 447 2869
MEC Dhlomo announces that KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) is ready to roll out school health programmes
Province
