SOUTH Africa held its seventh SA aids conference last month; I don’t even want to zoom in on this as the conference itself was just like a judge presiding over his own case.
We need to understand that the country’s fight against HIV and aids is on two fronts which are firstly, curbing and reducing the spread of HIV and secondly, the clinical management of aids-related diseases. The first one is more evident through services such as HIV counselling and testing (HCT) and other information, education and campaign programmes, while the clinical management of aids-related diseases is more about putting qualifying people on anti-retrovirals (ARV’s), prevention of mother to child transmission, for example.
As a country we are doing well in terms of aids treatment as statistics reveal that three million people are on ARV’s countrywide. Life expectancy has risen to 62 years due to ARV intervention, the death rate has almost halved over a period of 10 years and mother to child transmission has been reduced by more than two thirds.
On the other hand, we are not doing well in terms of curbing and reducing the spread of HIV as the statistics show that close to half a million people in South Africa are diagnosed with HIV every year on top of the staggering 6,4 million currently infected with HIV.
Considering the escalating number of new infections, I am of the opinion that the HCT programme needs to be fundamentally rearranged. One of the key principles of HCT is to improve society’s health literacy. The fact that close to half a million people are still diagnosed with HIV every year suggests that our country’s health literacy is still alarmingly low.
The following interventions are a must: Government must provide quality training for the HCT counsellors, HCT needs to be restored to 70% health promotion and education and 30% testing.
Chasing after high targets of HIV testing will never in any way reduce the amount of new infections, only health promotion and education about HIV and aids can.
Ramakola Bopape is the Coordinator of Capricorn District Community Based Organisations (CBO) Forum. He writes in his personal capacity.
