NAMIBIA: Govt and NGO launch joint assault against HIV/AIDS

Johannesburg, 15 September 2006 (PlusNews) - While government and civil society groups in Namibia can point to successes in the anti-AIDS drive, activists warns there is still much more to do.

As the ministry of health prepared to beat its national target of providing antiretroviral (ARV) drugs to 300,000 people by the end of 2008, the Yelula-Alliance2015 AIDS Project, a nongovernmental organisation, was busy educating people from the northern regions on how to deal with stigma and the social impact of the pandemic.

Yelula project manager Terina Stibbard told PlusNews: "While the treatment aspect of the battle has gained momentum, it could be short-lived if the factors which fuel the pandemic in communities were not also tackled."

In just three years Namibia was able to increase its number of ARV sites from 7 to 34 by the end of April 2006. Most of the clinics, targeting an estimated 60 percent of the 2.2 million population, are in the north.

Despite this achievement, Stibbard felt that not enough attention was being focused on prevention messages, counteracting stigma and involving men in curbing the spread of HIV.

"One of the aims of Yelula's recent second annual conference ['Positive Being: Northern Namibia Conference of People Living with HIV and AIDS'] was to help government balance the AIDS fight by educating and encouraging the participation of communities," Stibbard said.

The event attracted more than double the 120 delegates who attended last year, including a notable increase in the number of men.

According to Namibia's latest National HIV Sentinel Survey, despite a decline in HIV prevalence from 22.0 percent to 19.7 percent between 2002 and 2004, women still bore the brunt of the pandemic.

"It is time for men to change their sexual behaviour and how they perceive this disease. It is through these same attitudes that their female counterparts are made more susceptible to HIV," health minister Dr Richard Kamwi told PlusNews.

He stressed the importance of delaying the onset of AIDS with consistent condom use to prevent infection and reinfection, regular monitoring of immune systems with CD4 tests twice a year, and proper nutrition and exercise.

HIV-positive couples and discordant couples, in which only one partner has HIV, were encouraged to support each other, and parents were urged to engage more openly between themselves and their children on the otherwise taboo subjects of sexual intercourse and faithfulness.

"We are set to beat our goal of providing ARVs to 30,000 people by the end of 2008, with already 22,000 accessing the medicine. But the risky sexual behaviours which still prevail could reverse this success," the minister said.

Delme Cupido, a lawyer with the AIDS law unit of the Legal Assistance Centre (LAC), an NGO working out of the capital, Windhoek, shared the minister's sentiments on the way forward against the pandemic, but warned that minority groups were falling through the cracks in anti-AIDS campaigns.

"Sex workers, prisoners and the homosexual community are still sidelined, but it is our hope that the current draft national AIDS policy, waiting to be approved by the government, will at least bring some of the much-needed interventions to these otherwise excluded members of society," he commented.

LAC officials have been actively involved in drafting the AIDS policy, but said the Criminal Procedures Act, in terms of which sex work and homosexuality are punishable offences, presented an obstacle in trying to roll out strategies for HIV prevention, treatment and care. This especially affected prisons, where condom distribution was unheard of because it might be considered as encouraging sex between men.

Cupido pointed out that the government's restrictive laws on commercial sex work and men who have sex with men, in and outside of the nation's prison system, could only help drive the pandemic and should be revisited.

"So, yes, the consequences of the pandemic dictate that we address all parts of society and, along these lines, I would say that we do still have a long way to go," Stibbard said.

She anticipated that Yelula's 2007 conference would attract an even bigger audience.

Theme (s): Care/Treatment - PlusNews,

[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]