Africa: HIV/Aids is Modern Day Slave Trade Threatening MDGs in Africa

The scourges of the African continent are legion-famine, drought, conflicts, wars, diseases, poverty, and HIV/AIDS. But among these destructive variables none is more ferocious in its consequences than HIV/AIDS.

The statistics are heart rendering and leave one with feelings of despondency and gloom for the continent. According to UNAIDS 2006 Report on Global AIDS Epidemic, out of the 38.6 million Persons Living With HIV/AIDS (PLWHAs) globally over 30 million live in Africa and one in 12 African adults is PLWHA.

The hardest hit group is the women. Fifty-seven percent of all HIV positive women worldwide live in Sub-Saharan Africa. And in South Africa 20% of pregnant women have tested positive, 40% in Botswana and Swaziland respectively.

It is against this blighted image of the continent that the Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians (Africa Region) held a three-day seminar on the theme: "The African Woman MP: Dealing with Women's Health, Poverty and HIV/AIDS". The theme, according to the Chairperson of the CWP Planning Committee of the event, Ms. Theresa Tagoe, "was carefully chosen in recognition of the fact that the African woman Parliamentarian needs to take centre stage in the fight against poverty and the devastating effects of HIV/AIDS on the continent ".

The seminar brainstormed topics such as "The African Woman MP and the challenges of Poverty"; "HIV/AIDS and Women: The Reality," "HIV/AIDS and the High Maternal and Infant Mortality in Africa" and the "Role of the Female Parliamentarian in Dealing with HIV/AIDS".

Speaking on " The HIV/AIDS and Women: The Reality", the Director- General of the Ghana AIDS Commission, Prof Sakyi Awuku Amoa, observed that "HIV/AIDS is an epidemic and a development crisis that has the capacity to wipe off a large segment of the most productive human capital of the society".

HIV/ AIDS has no doubt become the modern day slave trade of Africa ,considering its depopulation of the continent on the scale of the slave trade. With under-population, the continent was bereft of the required labour force for economic development. This phenomenon, more than any other was largely responsible for the present levels of deprivation and poverty on the continent.

With HIV/AIDS sapping the fabric of human resources of the continent, achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), is becoming a pipe dream. The MDGs are the world's time-bound and quantified targets for addressing extreme poverty in its many dimensions-income poverty, hunger, disease, lack of adequate shelter, and exclusion-while promoting gender equality, education, and environmental sustainability. They are also basic human rights-the rights of each person on the planet to health, education, shelter, and security.

It must be admitted that the world has made significant progress in achieving many of the Goals. Between 1990 and 2002 average overall incomes increased by approximately 21 percent. The number of people in extreme poverty declined by an estimated 130 million. Child mortality rates fell from 103 deaths per 1,000 live births a year to 88. Life expectancy rose from 63 years to nearly 65 years. An additional eight percent of the developing world's people received access to water. And an additional 15 percent acquired access to improved sanitation services.

The UN itself acknowledges the fact that "progress has been far from uniform across the world-or across the goals. There are huge disparities across and within countries. Within countries, poverty is greatest for rural areas, though urban poverty is also extensive, growing, and underreported by traditional indicators".

According to the UN, " Sub-Saharan Africa is the epicenter of crisis, with continuing food insecurity, a rise of extreme poverty, stunningly high child and maternal mortality, and large numbers of people living in slums, and a widespread shortfall for most of the MDGs."

To halt the threat posed by HIV/AIDS relative to the MDGs, this writer suggests the mainstreaming of HIV/AIDS educational programmes into national activities. Educational institutions should lead the way by incorporating HIV/AIDS into their curricular. Members of the Executive, the legislature and the judiciary should be seen to be doing more in terms of campaign programmes directed to the youth who form the base of the country labour force and highly vulnerable to the epidemic.

Besides, Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) should mainstream HIV/AIDS programme in the workplace. It also high time civil society groups got seriously involved in the fight against HIV/AIDS.

It is the belief of this writer that a multi-sectoral and holistic approach in the war on HIV/AIDS is the panacea to the epidemic and thereby bringing the attainment of the MDGs within the range of human possibilities.

By Ebenezer Hanson
Accra - Ghanaian weekly independent newspaper

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Posted by Kharim O. Ames

S.Africa AIDS: Beets give way to drugs

South Africa is promising to improve the availability of AIDS drugs and increase its focus on education and prevention - a dramatic shift in a country where officials were earlier this year promoting beetroots and lemons as treatments. Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka has stressed in recent meetings that the government now believes unequivocally that HIV causes AIDS - something once questioned by the president - and that antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) must be at the core of its response. "The beetroot and all that lemon stuff is out the window. These guys are now serious about getting it right," the Washington Post quotes a government advisor as saying. Almost one in three adults in South Africa are infected with the HIV virus that causes AIDS, and every day 1,000 people become infected, reports USA Today in an article on the disease's devastating economic impact. "This is a sea change. We're not across the ocean yet, but now the government is sailing in the right direction," Mark Heywood, director of the AIDS Law Project in Johannesburg, is quoted as saying in Britain's Guardian newspaper. South African government officials have caused international outrage in recent years over a series of controversial statements. In 2000, President Thabo Mbeki queried the link between the HIV virus and AIDS. Not until late 2003, did the government reluctantly introduce a public programme of making ARVs available to patients following a court ruling. That's two years later than its neighbour Botswana. Yet despite having one of the biggest public AIDS treatment programmes in the world, only 200,000 South Africans, of an estimated 800,000 in need, are receiving the government drugs. In May, this year, former Deputy President Jacob Zuma caused anger during his trial for rape when he said he had taken a shower after unprotected sex to avoid catching the disease. And in August, Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang sparked uproar at an AIDS conference in Toronto by advocating a diet of beetroot, lemons and garlic as treatment. Signs of a shift in policy have been evident during recent meetings Mlambo-Ngcuka has held with AIDS activist groups, who up to now have been largely ignored. "There's been a switch, the most hopeful switch in years, over the past four of five weeks," Francois Venter, head of the Southern African HIV Clinicians Society, is quoted as saying in the Washington Post article. Firm targets are to be set over the coming months for expanding prevention programmes and the availability of ARV drugs. A five-year government plan is due to be released on World AIDS day on 1 December. "We must tighten up so that ARV drugs are more accessible, especially to the poor. Education and prevention of HIV infection must be scaled up," Mlambo-Ngcuka told a conference of health professionals, church leaders and labour officials, reported by the Guardian. In a country where total deaths from the disease are estimated to reach 5.4 million by 2015, compared with 1.8 million at the end of this year, according to figures quoted by USA Today, this is certainly a welcome policy shift. Let's hope that Tshabalala-Msimang (AKA 'Dr Beetroot'), who is reported to be maintaining some role in the nation's AIDS policy, is privy to a few of the planned education programmes.

Provided by Reuters
Any views expressed in this article are those of the author and not of Reuters.

Posted by Anish John