10 June 2005
The Minister of Health wishes to congratulate the organisers of the second SA AIDS conference, and all the participants for a very productive four days spent on deliberations about the challenge of HIV and AIDS.
The second SA AIDS Conference has provided a perfect platform for various stakeholders including scientists, health workers, NGO, private sector, communities and government to share experiences and reflect on the progress in our comprehensive response to HIV and AIDS.
The high level of participation in the past four days is a clear demonstration of the recognition by the delegates of a need for a strong partnership between all sectors in our country as an effective tool in curbing the spread of HIV infection and reducing the impact of HIV and AIDS in our society.
The conference came at the time when government has been calling for more coordinated efforts in our assault against the disease. The theme of this year's conference: Unity and Accountability is a clear demonstration of the road we have travelled since the last gathering in 2002, and the Minister is pleased that the conference has lived up to this theme.
After four days of high quality presentations and robust debates by 4 000 strong delegates, the conference emerged with a sense that no single intervention is enough, by itself, to curb the spread of the disease. There was overwhelming agreement that a comprehensive approach is the best one, and an overwhelming number of scientist and researchers gave support for government's Comprehensive Plan for Management, Care and Treatment of HIV and AIDS as one of the best in the world. Participants also agreed that the various inputs from various researchers, while beginning to provide some answers to the many questions we still have, nevertheless point to the need for more research to be done and more answers to be sought, especially by South African researchers themselves.
One of the challenges faced by future organisers of this conference is how to build on the spirit of unity that prevailed at this conference. Key to this challenge will be the need to be much more inclusive and representative of all the areas of concern with regard to our understanding of HIV and AIDS. For example, we will need to draw more on research around the role of traditional medicines in the treatment of AIDS, a very big silence in today's conference. We may also need to include more work on the sciences other than biomedical science, such as behavioural science, social sciences, and even economic sciences, in order to understand how to deal better with the challenge of prevention, which must remain the cornerstone of our response, again a gap in this last conference. Even if the conference is largely about sharing evidence from research, we must not create a perception that it is only about research around one form of intervention only - that is antiretroviral treatment.
The Department of Health remains determined to intensify interventions against HIV and AIDS in a comprehensive manner premised on prevention, treatment, care and support. This we will do within the broader context of the government health promotion and healthy lifestyle programme which advocates good nutrition, physical activity, tobacco control, combating alcohol abuse and the promotion of safe and responsible sexual behaviour.
We hope that all South Africans, especially those that were involved in this conference, will learn from it and begin to transcend their prejudices against others in the fight against AIDS, and will join hands with us to ensure that more and more young people in particular, make the right choices, and prevent new infections. We will also be meeting with the organisers soon, to decide how best they can provide us with their reflections on the conference and the conclusions reached, so that we can benefit from them.
Issued by: Director-General: Thami Mseleku, National Department of Health
Enquiries: Solly Mabotha 083 678 9860 or Charity Bhengu 083 679 7424