Health Ministry response to Vavi

26 September 2005

The Ministry of Health is concerned about the damaging remarks attributed to the Secretary General of Cosatu, Zwelinzima Vavi about Government response to HIV and AIDS.

At best, the remarks demonstrate high level of ignorance on the part of the Cosatu leader about the challenge of HIV and AIDS in the country and the government response to this challenge.

However, this should be expected as Cosatu’s positions on health are determined the Treatment Action Campaign and the AIDS Law Project.

A recent example is the set of four resolutions relating to health taken by Cosatu Central Committee meeting last month. All of them were derived from a presentation made by the TAC at this meeting. We expected Cosatu to provide an objective leadership to its constituency on these critical issues. Unfortunately, Vavi has abdicated his responsibility and allowed Cosatu’s policy positions to be driven by an antiretroviral drug lobby group – the TAC.

Before making irresponsible public statements on HIV and AIDS, Vavi needs to first get his facts straight.

People on treatment are not 10 000 as reported in the Business Day. By June 2005, more than 61 000 were already initiated on antiretroviral treatment in the public health sector.

There are now 178 public health facilities providing HIV and AIDS related services, including antiretroviral drugs. These facilities are spread across all the 53 districts in the country and cover at least 60% of local municipalities. Such distribution of services ensures that all South Africans - rich or poor, urban or rural – have equitable access to AIDS related care and treatment.

More than R3,4 billion has been allocated exclusively for procurement of antiretroviral drugs for the period up to the end of 2007.

Again a demostration of ignorance, Vavi claims that government has no comprehensive HIV education campaign and sex education in schools. Government has always maintained that, in the absence of a cure, prevention remains the mainstay of our response to HIV and AIDS. We have sustained our efforts to encourage particularly young people to abstain from sex. The life-skills programme in schools and the broader healthy lifestyle programme are some of the initiatives that empower the youth to take care of their health. We cannot yet claim any victory, but the trends indicate a constant decline in the prevalence of HIV amongst teenagers since 1999.

Our condom distribution programme cannot be compared to any in the world. Public health sector male condom distribution has increased by 80% from 150 million in 1997 to 270 million in 2003.  Condoms have been distributed to at least 3000 informal outlets, with an average of over 1 million condoms per month in spaza shops, taverns, hair salon etc.

The Department of Health has increased the number of sites to access female condoms from the initial 28 pilot sites in 2000 to over 200 sites in 2003 with 1.4 million female condoms distributed in 2003.

We have increased budget allocation for HIV and AIDS communication campaign – Khomanani, Caring Together - from R90 million to R160 million over two years to support the implementation of the Comprehensive Plan for Management, Care and Treatment of HIV and AIDS.

The Department of Health would appreciate an opportunity to present to the members of Cosatu on the implementation of the Comprehensive Plan for the Management, Care and Treatment of HIV and AIDS.

The workers should be allowed to make their own conclusions on the implementation of government programmes. They should not be made to endorse the positions of a lobby groups that has a narrow view of the enourmous social challenges facing their democratically elected government.
 
Notes for the Editors:

Here are Cosatu’s resolutions on health:

• We call on the Department of Health to convene an urgent National HIV and AIDS Prevention Summit to devise a more effective implementation strategy before the end of 2005. The new strategy should take into account gender, poverty, and access to information, and must go beyond the simplistic ABC model.
• We support the national treatment target of at least 200 000 people to be put on antiretrovirals by the end of 2006. We shall encourage voluntarily testing and counselling of workers as part of the new implementation strategy.
• We call for the extension of the deadline for submissions on the draft national health charter and human resources framework for the public sector, in order to allow key stakeholders such as trade unions to submit their proposals.
• We call on the CEC to develop proposals on nurse/patient, doctor/patient and general support staff/patient ratios, in order to relieve the huge burden placed on health workers and deliver quality health care to our people

Source - http://www.cosatu.org.za/docs/2005/declarations.pdf

Extracts from the TAC presentation to Cosatu Central Committee meeting:

• We call on this CC to call for an urgent National HIV Prevention Summit to devise a new plan to be organized by the Department of Health before end of 2005, which takes into account gender, poverty and access to information and goes beyond the simplistic Abstain, Be Faithful, Condomise (ABC) model. Such a meeting must include all stakeholders.
• TAC is calling for a national target of at least 200 000 people on ARVs by end of March 2006. We ask the COSATU CC to endorse this target and to actively promote HIV testing and treatment including antiretroviral treatment among all union members.  
• We appeal to you [Cosatu CC] to support the call made by TAC, SAMA, the SACC, NEHAWU and others to ask for an extension of the deadline for submissions and for the process of finalizing the charter to remain open beyond 15 August. We believe that both the Charter and the Human Resource Plan, if they are properly developed, are an opportunity to create thousands of new jobs in the health sector, and to improve the quality and conditions of service of existing health care workers. That is why we must oppose attempts to finalise these documents without full consultation.
• We call on COSATU to urgently develop concrete proposals on numbers of health workers needed to deliver quality health services to the poor and the conditions under which health workers should be employed.

Source - TAC Electronic Newsletter: COSATU Central Committee adopts TAC proposals on health-care and HIV prevention and treatment (22 August 2005): http://www.tac.org.za/