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A Plea From South Africa: Now is Not the Time to Retreat From the Global HIV Response (PERSPECTIVE)
Wednesday, July 21, 2010 at 5:08PM By Roxy Marosa;)
(HN, July 21, 2010) -- In the run-up to the World Cup, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), the medical humanitarian organization, sounded a loud and worrisome alarm bell: major donors are starting to roll-back funding of HIV prevention and treatment programs that millions of people in Sub-Saharan Africa have come to depend on.
Each time I interact with people both infected and affected by HIV, there is still a huge lack of knowledge around HIV and Aids. It goes without saying that so much more remains to be done, and what has been done is not enough.
A case in point: I recently learned that there are still people who have no idea what HIV or those who have the wrong idea of what HIV is. I am particularly referring to the remote rural areas of South Africa.
I ran a session in April this year with a group of faith denominations, where one of the priests said he discovered an area that’s challenging to reach by means of the usual transportation. Addressing the subject of HIV, he was almost in tears as he spoke about the people in this little village who had never heard of HIV - yet there were so many deaths and it is through learning about the deaths that he discovered the place. There is little civilization in the area and people live with just the basics. The priest asked himself, having taken so many years of HIV and Aids education to reach people in civilized societies, how long will it take for people in this isolated community to understand and practice safe sex?
It has been drummed into people’s minds that the way to be safe with HIV and Aids is through prevention, testing and treatment. This method has taken years to reach people and it is taking years for people to get used to it and practice it.
We still have so many challenges to overcome, such as:
- Basic education for people who have not been exposed to HIV and Aids education
- Reaching people who have never seen a female condom, let alone use it.
- Helping women who stay in abusive relationships because they are reliant on their partners for day to day survival
- Changing the mindsets of women who see sex as an obligation to their husbands
- Dealing with men’s attitude towards safe sex - sex with a condom
- Providing access to people not able to reach clinics for testing
- Outreach to the street dwellers who get raped from time to time and are so used to it and no longer see it as rape
The people who are best able to address these challenges are the not-for-profit organisations. Without crucial funding, they are not able to execute their work. And a draw back on funding would throw tens of thousands of people out of work who have been endowed with skills to help millions of others.
What I think of a lot these days is, what will be the impact of of a withdrawal of funding on ordinary people. If you ask most people ‘How do you manage HIV and AIDS’?, the most common response is ‘by taking AIDS tablets.’
Some people - especially low-income earners - refuse to test because they are afraid of the outcome and say that the knowledge that they are positive will lead them to die sooner. Can we blame them for being afraid after seeing so many deaths due to this pandemic? To them the reality is that HIV and Aids leads to death.
Recently in South Africa - which has the highest case load of HIV Aids patients in the world - the government declared a 15 month war on AIDS;15 million people are to be tested by July 2011. Most of the tests are free and those who need treatment will receive it for free. The unemployed are to get the benefits government has made available. It has taken years to get us to this point, and to get the sceptical people to be open to testing, and have the hope and belief of life with HIV and AIDS. Now this possibility is threatened.
It took many years for people in Africa to utter the words HIV and AIDS. And it is still taking tremendous work for people to relate to their neighbours living with the virus freely without prejudice or judgement.
The way I see it is if major donors want to roll back funding for testing and treatment, they should propose a different approach to remedying the whole situation. People have to understand why they are vulnerable to this virus. They have to be educated in order to change their attitudes towards activities that will lead them to becoming infected with the virus and responsible for the choices they make.
The fact that we still have new cases of the virus should be sufficient proof that education about HIV and Aids is insufficient - and needs to be scaled up.
It has taken us years to get to the point where people are able to distinguish the difference between HIV and AIDS. People are only now warming up to the idea of getting tested, and are summoning the courage to deal with fear of the test outcome.
Let us not turn our backs on the millions of people in Sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere who have embraced prevention and treatment.
As donor nations meet in Vienna this week at the XVIII International AIDS Conference, the message should be loud and clear: now is not the time for major donors to retreat from their commitments to the global HIV response that has saved the lives of millions.
Cape Town-based Roxy Marosa is host of the Roxy Marosa Show and runs several projects assisting people affected by HIV and Aids in South Africa.
Reader Comments (3)
Hi Roxy, fantastic piece, thank you. I work for MSF and want to point you in the direction of a nurse we have working in Zimbabwe. She writes a beautiful blog and your words made me think of one post in particular, so I thought I'd share it with you... http://bit.ly/bIX4RY
Cheers
Pete
Thank you Pete.
Roxy
Well done Rox. Keep up the sterling work at educating, challenging and enlightening people. I'm proud of you girl friend xx Bron