This is an archive of the Treatment Action Campaign's public documents from
December 1998 until October 2008. I created this website because the TAC's
website appears unmaintained and people were concerned that it
was becoming
increasingly hard to find important documents.
The menu items have
been slightly edited and a new stylesheet applied to the site. But none of the
documents have been edited, not even for minor errors. The text appears on this
site as obtained from the Internet Archive.
The period covered by
the archive encompassed the campaign for HIV medicines, the civil disobedience
campaigns, the Competition Commission complaints, the 2008 xenophobic violence
and the PMTCT, Khayelitsha health workers and Matthias Rath court cases.
Good morning ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Department of Health, and
thank you for coming here at such short notice.
The National HIV Sero-prevalence Survey of Women attending public antenatal
clinics in South Africa, is a yearly survey. The Directorate Health Systems
Research, Research Co-ordination and Epidemiology have conducted it, since
1990.
The epidemiological profile shows that HIV continues to be a very serious
health
problem in South Africa.
The national HIV prevalence rate for 1999 is 22.4%.
This is substantially the same as the 1998 rate, which was 22.8%. This
means that
both fall within the same confidence limits.
From the study findings we estimated that there were approximately 4.2
million
people infected with HIV in South Africa at the end of 1999.
Women in their twenties continue to have the highest HIV prevalence rates.
There
is a trend towards slightly lower HIV prevalence rates amongst teenage girls
for
1999 than there were in 1998. On the other hand HIV prevalence was slightly
higher in the 30 to 34 year old group and in the 35 to 39 year old group.
HIV prevalence has increased in five provinces.
Three provinces namely, KwaZulu Natal, Northern Cape and Northern Province
have prevalence rates that have not increased from 1998. The 1999 findings
suggest that South Africa may be seeing a shift in the epidemiological
profile of HIV,
in which a small degree of stabilisation may be occurring. In essence,
this means
that there is not a generalised HIV increase in all geographic areas.
Stabilisation does not necessarily mean that fewer cases of HIV infection
are
occurring, or that there is necessarily a change in HIV incidence, though
this may
be a contributing factor. Other factors may include higher mortality
amongst HIV
infected individuals, fewer pregnancies amongst women with HIV and so on.
Other
supporting data and HIV incidence studies are required to confirm the
stabilisation
factor.
Over the years, KwaZulu-Natal and the Western Cape, for example, have
consistently remained at the extreme ends of HIV prevalence levels. While
findings
from the 1999 antenatal HIV survey confirm these trends, they also
underscore the
fact that our attention needs to be drawn not as much to the levels of HIV
infection,
as to the pace at which the epidemic is progressing within provinces.
Hence, although KwaZulu-Natal remains the province with the highest
prevalence
rate, no increase is shown in this province between 1998 and 1999. In
contrast,
the Western Cape, whilst remaining the province with the lowest level of
infection,
shows a 36.5% increase from 5.2% in 1998 to 7.1% in 1999.
People in their twenties constitute more than 50% of the infected population
in South
Africa. This has tremendous impact on the social fabric of the country and
on its
economy, as this age category represents the youngest portion of our
productive
class. Knowing ones HIV status has been proven (with appropriate support
and
counselling) to change behavioural risk in favour of safer sex practices.
In the light of this, we need to encourage people of all age categories to
go for
voluntary testing and counselling for HIV, as a means to effectively
promoting safe
sex practices.
As we loose breadwinners, child survival is re-emerging as one of the
critical areas
of care and support. It is also arising, not only as a health issue, but
very much as a
welfare and social problem too. It can therefore only be successfully dealt
with,
through inter-sectoral collaboration and social mobilisation, as in many
cases the
survival of an HIV infected child will be complicated by the fact that
he/she would
also be an orphan.
The figures for the prevalence of HIV/AIDS in our country are a very serious
issue
for government. We will, through the South African National AIDS Council,
and all
our partnerships against AIDS, both national and international, redouble our
efforts
to prevent the further spread of the disease, and to provide care and
support for
those infected and affected by it.