Issued by: GCIS
CHRIS HANI BARAGWANATH HOSPITAL
4 NOVEMBER 1999
Madame Chairperson,
Honourable Ministers from SADC Member States and Rwanda,
Senior officials from SADC Member States,
The World Health Organisation and UN-AIDS,
Ladies and Gentlemen.
I consider it my duty to welcome you to South Africa and open your special meeting on HIV/AIDS.
I could never have wished for a better venue in which to welcome you than Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto. Both the hospital and the township are significant landmarks in South Africa in their own right. Known the world over for its size and pioneering work on medicine, the hospital served as a refuge and a place of healing for the citizens of this township and beyond during one of our most fierce battles against apartheid in 1976, when many brave students and youth lost their lives.
From Soweto and other places, young people found new homes with our neighbours in SADC Member countries, joining generations of South Africans that had already made their homes in Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Swaziland, Angola and Botswana. The generous contribution that each member state made to our struggle for liberation should and will never be forgotten. It is on occasions like this, when we are graced with the presence of our brothers and sisters from SADC Member States, that we remember the hospitality that was extended to us. The SADC Member States who played a crucial role in the establishment of our democracy, are now even more important for the building of a regional bloc that is able to take on the rest of the world. South Africa is committed to building partnerships, and we are optimistic that working together, we will contribute to the integrated development in our region. The Ministers of Health should be commended for putting health on the SADC agenda. Health and development are two sides of the same coin. Nations that are ravaged by HIV/AIDS and other debilitating diseases produce at a fraction of their potential. It is this potential that the health sector can help unlock by coming up with concrete and implementable proposals to end the scourge.
Although the disease affects mainly young people, the picture does not get much better for our adult populations. This is an added pressure on a region that battles to control tuberculosis that has been around for so long. We now see our achievements in controlling tuberculosis being reversed by HIV/AIDS.
The realisation by the health sector that territorial borders are fictitious in the fight against diseases that are common to and affecting all the countries in our region, can only lead to more effective control of these diseases. Co-operation between states is thus not only desirable, but also necessary.
The Health Ministers of Mozambique, South Africa and Swaziland have recently signed the Protocol on Malaria Control in the Lubombo Spatial Development Initiative. By signing this protocol, they have demonstrated the critical role that health will play. Such a protocol should be extended so as to include other countries in the region.
By involving the community in the control of the spread of HIV/AIDS, the health sector will empower them to take charge of their own health and their own development. There can be no better way of empowering communities than to show them that their health is in their own hands. We look forward to a wider community participation in the health sector in all the SADC member states.
Ladies and Gentlemen, not since the Black Death that decimated Europe and Asia in the Dark Ages, has a disease so dramatically affected the lives and livelihood of so many people. Economic development, which underscored the establishment of the SADC, is under serious threat as studies show that the disease affects the 15-to-45 year age group, which is the most economically active group in the SADC countries.
Our lack of openness about HIV/AIDS can be likened to fighting an invisible enemy in the dark. In our quest to escape the reality about the disease and the gravity of the situation, we have developed euphemisms that we use when referring to people who suffer from or have died from AIDS. In mainly Black communities, people refer to it as "the four-letter disease". Ladies and Gentlemen, we will not succeed in fighting this disease for as long as we refuse to accept reality. We will continue to perish in even larger numbers.
In many countries of the region there has been a tendency to treat the disease as foreign. Fortunately we all now realise the futility of the exercise. We have now come to accept that "umthakathi usekhaya" meaning: "The witch is in the home." Ladies and gentlemen, the witch is not with our neighbours, but in our own backyards and homes.
Controversies about possible vaccines have not brought us closer to the solutions. Vigorous research should be accompanied by drastic changes in our behaviour patterns. As the disease continues to destroy many lives, we should graduate from awareness campaigns about AIDS to the implementation stage as a priority. This gathering is evidence that implementation should now be accorded priority status in our deliberations. Honourable Ministers, tired as you are from a round of trips to Egypt and the Seychelles in the past two weeks, you still managed to give this meeting the attention it deserves. Your commitment to the health of our people cannot be questioned.
I wish you well in balancing the many competing health needs of your countries and the region, within limited and ever shrinking national budgets. We have all the faith in you and support you in all your endeavours. May this meeting add ammunition to the vast array of weaponry you have already assembled in fighting this disease.
Once more, Honourable Ministers, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to South Africa Let's get down to business and vow to do everything in our power to enhance the rebirth of our continent.
I thank you.