HIV/Aids Africa

Namibia was chosen to host the fifth HIV/AIDS Implementers? Meeting as it has turned the tide in the fight against HIV/AIDS, said Dr Norbert Foster, deputy permanent secretary in the Ministry of Health and Social Services.He told journalists this week that the country?s prevalence rate has gone down to about 17% and a large proportion of people living with the disease are on anti-retroviral (ARV) therapy.According to Dr Foster, it is important that Namibia hosts this meeting as the Southern African Development Community (SADC) has the highest prevalence rate in Africa.?It is a great honour for Namibia to host this meeting. It is the first country in SADC to do so. This is especially important because HIV and AIDS have an epicentre and that epicentre is in [the] SADC,? he said.Dennis Weeks, coordinator of the President?s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief in Namibia, also praised the country?s efforts in combating HIV/AIDS. He said Namibia has rolled out a very successful programme in the fight against AIDS.The HIV/AIDS Implementers? Meeting brings programme implementers from around the world together to share best practices and lessons learned in the fight against AIDS. The meeting also seeks to disseminate best practices and lessons learned during the implementation of multi-sectoral HIV/AIDS programmes with a focus on optimising the impact of prevention, care and treatment programmes, enhancing programme quality and promoting coordination among partners.

The Material Testing Institute in the Department of Civil Engineering at the
Polytechnic of Namibia recently received a donation of a state-of-the-art range
of engineering equipment from the Deutsche Ge-sellschaft Fuer Technische
Zusammenarbeit (GTZ), to be used for on-site testing road substrates,
foundations and civil structures.Speaking at a hand-over ceremony that was
conducted at the Polytechnic Campus, Rector Tjama Tjivikua said that four years
ago, the GTZ outlined its new areas of co-operation in Namibia as land reform,
economic development, HIV/AIDS and civil engineering.?In 2006, GTZ, the Ministry
of Works and Transport and Communication at that time engaged the polytechnic in
defining the technical cooperation.?The polytechnic has benefited in three of
the aforesaid areas in economic development through the support of an expert to
support innovation, in land reform in the form of experts and consultancies, and
in civil engineering through education and training,? Tjivikua said.He said that
Namibia was ranked lowly at 128 out of 133 countries in terms of the
availability of scientists and engineers in the Global Competitiveness ranking
of 2009/2010.?At independence, there was no engineering training offered in
Namibia. With the support of the government, the polytechnic therefore took up
the challenge to train engineers very early in its development in 1997, a year
after our establishment as an autonomous institution,? he said.The Minister of
Works and Transport, Hon. Erriki Ngimtina said the shortage of skilled personnel
is the country?s biggest challenge. And as in the case with other sectors, his
ministry has a severe shortage of well-trained engineers that are crucial to the
ministry and to the country at large.Also speaking at the ceremony, H.E Egon
Kochanke, Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany to Namibia said the
Polytechnic of Namibia enjoys an outstanding reputation for innovation and
emphasis on practical experience.

HIV/AIDS patients are not the favourite members of medical aid funds. Their treatment is so expensive that those with medical aid schemes have limited health benefits – so limited that they often have to their treatment since they cannot afford to pay it out of their pockets.The ?Health is Vital Risk Equalisation Fund? was established to address these very challenges. The fund is the brainchild of Prosperity Health, but it is a fund for the entire industry, said Kobus Struwig, the MD of Prosperity Health.?Namibia is a small market in which critical mass is not achieved because of the small membership base of healthcare funds in the market?, he said. The fund is targeted at corporate entities with a big work force. It will also look at HIV/AIDS management, such as keeping national statistics of infected employees and their status; information which the private sector can use in planning.With an industry-funded healthcare plan, medical aid funds will not have to carry the HIV risk. The ?Health is Vital Risk Equalisation Fund? has already received the green light from the Namibia Financial Supervisory Authority. And four medical aid funds have already indicated their eagerness to join the fund and are expected to transfer the HIV/AIDS medical coverage of their members, about 33000, to the industry fund by January next year.Membership contribution is set at N$20 per person. The fund will be administrated by Methealth Namibia.Prosperity Health aims to consolidate the isolated initiatives of commerce and industry with this fund and create a joint communal programme as well as an effective HIV/AIDS financial plan available to all companies and medical aid funds. It also wants to create buying power within the private sector through a critical mass that will secure lower-priced medication and treatment.The fund will cover HIV/AIDS, opportunistic infections and counselling. The fund will be managed by an independent Board of Trustees from amongst the members of medical aid funds, the medical profession and the donor community.According to Struwig, the fund will also take on individuals with no medical aid benefits. The individuals will pay a higher fee of N$30 per person, but there is hope that this could be subsidised by the European Union donor community with whom Prosperity Health is engaged in discussions.If successful, Prosperity Health will introduce the same fund in countries where the company operates. Prosperity Health is administrating medical aid funds in South Africa, Tanzania and Kenya.?It is the first in Africa, a milestone in Namibia?, Struwig said of the industry fund for HIV/AIDS, adding that at present the medical aid industry does not have the capacity to manage HIV/AIDS and related diseases.?We push claims, throw them in the system and pay the doctors, but we do not manage?.

“The contribution of the US government to the health sector in Namibia
through the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and its combined
agencies averaged 30% of the global contribution to the government of Namibia
per year from 2007 to 2010.”This was said by the minister of health and social
services, Richard Kamwi at the occasion to bid farewell to the USA Ambassador to
Namibia Dennise Mathieu and the launch of the World Health Organisation’s women
and health report in the capital earlier this week.?These financial
contributions were geared toward supporting the implementation of the
government?s HIV/AIDS Medium Term Plan III, in the areas of treatment,
prevention, prevention of mother-to-child transmission(PMTCT) counseling and
testing and care,? he said.Kamwi furthermore said the U.S. government funds have
greatly contributed to the renovations and upgrading of health facilities and
especially impacted on the HIV case management as well as prevention of Mother
to Child HIV transmission to which the country is committed to eliminate by
2015.?In the past four years and with support from the U.S. government through
the able leadership of Her Excellency Ambassador Dennise Mathieu, we have opened
ARV clinics in Engela, Eenhana, Oshakati, Otijwarongo, Katima, Kuiseb, Okongo
and the Katutura Health centre. This has largely contributed to improved access
to ARVs and achieve the so-much commended Namibia?s excellent ARV coverage
towards universal access,? Kamwi added.He thanked the ambassador for her
leadership and dedication to the cause of health and for all she has done to
support his ministry to face and overcome the challenges it was confronted
with.?I thank you and through you, the government and the people of the United
States of America for your immense support. You are one of the women
contributors to the health of societies and that?s why we have twined your
farewell with the launch of the WHO report ?Women and Health: Today?s evidents,
Tomorrow?s agenda?. You know too well that health systems depend on women as
providers of health systems shortfalls deprive women of health care,? he
said.The minister also said that the ambassador not only demonstrated that she
is sensitive to challenges caused to women?s health but she also contributed to
the creation of economic opportunities for women and gave them a voice.?Just
last week at the Women Summit, we heard you encouraging women to take their
destiny in their hands and seize opportunities created by your government for
trade. All these are the same issues that are dealt with in this report.?The
Namibian government is also committed to act. We will ensure that health is
taken care of in all policies. We need to make our systems work for women,?
Kamwi concluded.

New thinking needed on impact of HIV/AIDS on agriculture

Johannesburg (IRIN) – The impact of HIV/AIDS on agriculture in Southern Africa is now well recognised. But a new report is calling for a rethink of current views on the effects of the epidemic and more concrete and specific regional responses.Despite current thinking on the effects of the epidemic on farming, which has mainly been based on qualitative methods, the study found that most quantitative household-level studies gave “a less catastrophic assessment of the impacts of rising AIDS-related mortality on the agricultural sector”.According to the report to be presented next month at an international conference on ‘HIV/AIDS and Food and Nutrition Security’ in South Africa, it has been generally accepted that the loss of productive family members would have an adverse impact on household agricultural production.However, prime age mortality affected households differently, as some were able to adjust to the shift in availability of resources through sharecropping arrangements, substituting hired labour for family, and reducing the amount of land cultivated.The recent shift by countries in the region from cultivating maize to roots and tubers has led to growing speculation that HIV/AIDS was responsible for these changes. Although it was possible that AIDS had contributed to the move, the report noted that major changes in agricultural policy were largely behind it.”Maize marketing policies in Kenya, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe were either eliminated or scaled back significantly, starting in the early 1990s, as part of economy-wide structural adjustment programmes. These policy changes clearly reduced the financial profitability of growing maize … and has shifted cropping incentives toward other food crops, especially those relatively unresponsive to fertilizer application, such as cassava,” it noted.As a result, “the evidence is mixed as to how AIDS is affecting agricultural systems and cropping patterns,” the report added.Nevertheless, the researchers identified three emerging trends that could help governments come up with responses based on localised farming systems, the suitability of alternative crops, and household characteristics.”As the supply of skilled and semi-skilled labour becomes relatively constrained as the disease progresses, the costs of skilled labour in the (mostly non-agricultural) formal sector is likely to rise”, causing a decline in the competitiveness of knowledge-intensive activities both in agriculture and non-agriculture. The authors called for steps to accelerate skills training in the sector.Secondly, mortality among rural households could cause a reversed migration of unskilled labour from urban to rural areas, to make up for the loss of agricultural labour caused by AIDS. This would enable rural households and communities to preserve existing farming systems, or slow the transition to less labour-intensive ones.Agricultural systems were likely to become less capital-intensive in hard-hit areas, exacerbating income inequalities as poor households sold off assets and land to those who could afford to buy, the paper pointed out.Agricultural policy could contribute to slowing the spread of HIV/AIDS through poverty reduction; living standards could be raised through productivity-enhancing investments in agricultural technology, improved crop marketing systems, basic education, infrastructure and governance, to help communities withstand the social and economic stresses caused by the disease, the report concluded.

The Millennium Challenge Account Namibia recently signed a contract worth
approximately US$2million with the GOPA world wide international consultants to
put into operation the National Training Fund that will be managed by the
Namibia Training Authority (NTA).The GOPA contract with a duration of three
years will be tasked with creating a National Training Fund Council to manage,
design and develop an operational framework for the fund and to pilot test all
aspects of the fund during implementation.According to Penny Akwenye, MCA
Namibia CEO, the fund will be not operational until 2013 and the MCA-N has also
established a separate training fund of approximately US$4 million that will
address skills shortage in the country while acting as an operational pilot of
the National Training Fund.?The Vocational Training Grant Fund will provide
training scholarships to be awarded to qualifying applicants who are unemployed
and come from low income backgrounds and who wish to receive training in areas
where skills shortage have been identified,? Akwenye said.She added that the MCA
Namibia Education project aims to improve poverty alleviation by increasing the
skills competencies and knowledge of all Namibians through new and innovation
methods of learning and so will create new opportunities for income
generation.?MCA-N is supporting the NTA by providing funds which will create a
?demand driven? industry lead system of training provision that reacts to market
trends,? she said. MCA-N will also assist the Community Skills Development
Foundation (COSDEF) by providing funding for the construction of 3 new Community
Skills Development Centres ( COSDECs) and the renovation of five of the existing
COSDECs.?The overall MCA-N Educational project budget is US$145million. The
Education project will in the coming four years focus on activities such as
general education, access to and management of textbooks, vocational and skills
training support, construction of three regional study and resource centres,
improvement of access to tertiary financing, cross-project support for
prevention and managing of HIV/AIDS in among teachers and learners,? Akwenye
added.

African states
have key role in development
The fight against poverty, unemployment, skewed
income and the devastating impacts of HIV/AIDS and other preventable diseases
are some of the social challenges facing African governments, said Prime
Minister Nahas Angula during Africa Public Service Day on 23 June.?All these
social evils are broadly speaking a consequence of under-development. In
reality, the challenge facing Africa is the challenge of underdevelopment. Given
the weak market players in Africa, the state has a pivotal role to lead the
fight against underdevelopment?, said Angula.He said in Africa the state must
play a pivotal role in bringing meaningful change to the lives of the majority
of Africa?s people.Africa Public Service Day was celebrated under the theme ?The
Role of the State in the Reconstruction of Africa?.The role of the state, say
Angula, were two interacting roles. ?These are service delivery and dynamic
social transformational?.As a service provider, the state should ensure the
provision of critical common goods. These include the strengthening of
institutions of governance, law and order, political stability, infrastructure,
health, education, rules of the game, etc. In other words, the State should
provide conditions for democratic governance, peace and stability.Under dynamic
social transformation, African states ?should play the role of transforming the
stagnant pre-capitalist and pre-industrial societies into dynamic, industrial
capitalist societies. In this sense, the state will serve as a catalyst for
bringing about massive interventions in economic development in order to
maximise growth?.These interventions may include policies like land
redistribution, the management of growth-generating rents, re-ordering of
property rights, for example, to deal with ?dead capital? in communal lands,
creation of regulatory and industrial policy and the protection of emerging
national endogenous entrepreneurs.If the state was going to fulfil its roles of
service delivery and social transformation, the Public Service should be the
leading agency in this endeavour. Such a Public Service should be free from rent
seeking and corruption. The Public Service should be professional and free from
political interference. In short, the Public Service should be meritocratic.
Such a Public Service should provide efficient, effective and accountable
service to the public.?This is the challenge of the African Public Service
today. Unless the African Public Service is able to support the state in its
developmental and transformational mission, African underdevelopment will remain
an enduring challenge to the generations to come?.

A recent stakeholder conference has put the spotlight on the challenges
Namibia?s civil society is faced with, some of which include a dependency on
donor funding, a lack of accounting skills and a lack of engagement between
civil society organisations and stakeholders.Justine Hunter, executive director
of the Namibia Institute for Democracy (NID), said most organisations depend on
foreign aid and are therefore concentrated in the health or HIV/AIDS sector.?The
biggest challenge to civil society as a whole is the decrease of donor funding
and the transition from core funding to project funding and a lack of
organisational and financial accounting skills, especially among the rurally
based organisations.?More networking among civil society organisations is needed
and the relationship with academia and research institutes need to be
strengthened to promote evidence-based advocacy. The interaction between civil
society and government institutions, especially parliament, needs to be improved
for civil society to provide more input into legislation,? Hunter said.
According to Phil ya Nangoloh, director of the National Society of Human Rights
(NSHR), more training is needed for those in the sector. He also said that those
participating in civil society should also become more serious about their
calling. Ya Nangoloh added that, although Namibia?s civil society is faced with
many challenges, it has made significant strides with regard to the protection
of human rights and creating awareness about HIV/AIDS.Namibia has more than 300
civil society and community-based organisations in the country.

With World AIDS Day this week, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies urged governments to honour their promise to write legislation that outlaws discrimination against HIV/AIDS-positive people.?This World AIDS Day, the Namibia Red Cross is reminding communities of the contribution made by people living with HIV/AIDS. Let us embrace people living with the virus as meaningful contributors to our families and communities and come closer to people living with HIV?, said ex-minister Toivo Ya Toivo, newly appointed chairman of the Namibia Red Cross Society.?This year, the Namibia Red Cross Society has worked diligently to keep our promise to come closer to people affected by HIV/AIDS in partnership with those living with the virus.?The Namibia Red Cross recently launched its anti-stigma campaign called ?Come closer ?? aimed to remind communities that a huge task still lay ahead as many HIV/AIDS-positive people are still ostracized by their communities and discriminated against in other aspects of their lives. With messages like ?Hug! Hug! You cannot get HIV by hugging?, the Namibia Red Cross aims to break down stigma and inform communities that it is perfectly all right to come closer to HIV/AIDS-positive people.The Red Cross and Red Crescent urged all 189 governments who signed the UN General Assembly Special Session Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS in 2001, to fulfil their promises. A comprehensive review of the Declaration of Commitment is currently underway in all countries, and in 2006, governments will be called on to report on progress made.?This World AIDS Day we need to reflect on the promises we have made in relation to our AIDS response, the way we work with people living with HIV/AIDS and recognize their contribution to our AIDS response. This is the only way we can guarantee the positive impact of our HIV work and improve the living conditions of communities made vulnerable by HIV/AIDS?, added Essack-Kauaria, the head of Namibia Red Cross Society.

In celebrating the achievements of three years of co-operation, the Namibia Network of Aids Service Organisations (NANASO) and the German Development Service (DED – Deutscher Entwicklungsdienst) awarded NANASO a certificate for ‘best practice’ this week.Issues listed during the press conference were the major achievements of NANASO, the umbrella body for non-governmental organisations (NGOs), community-based organisations and faith-based organisations across Namibia working in the field of HIV/Aids.The HIV/Aids network has more than 17000 volunteers, of which about 1000 are full-time staff and almost 300 part-time who work for NGOs, community-based organisations and faith-based organisations.According to Michael Mulondo, the national co-ordinator of NANASO achieved much by publishing a series of reports (a monitoring and evaluation survey), training programmes such as workplace training programmes with a focus on small businesses, family and stigma, organisational development, project cycle management and accounting.Mulondo said that NANASO?s mission was to provide a networking service to its members to enable them to strengthen and maximise their potential to effectively address the HIV/Aids epidemic through communication, facilitation, co-ordination and monitoring, as well as advocacy.Marriane Woeler, the programme officer for DED said that NANASO’s success story was a result of common efforts of the organisation’s staff and experts from DED.?We believe the DED through the empowerment of non-governmental organisations made a visible contribution towards delivering efficient solutions for social and political challenges can be given?, said Woeler. She said that many NGOs were usually not able to meet the donor organisations? requirements for ensuring transparency and accountability as they had difficulty when it came to writing proposals or project reports and in leading their organisations. She added that this was the reason why DED concentrated on supporting the NGOs in overcoming constraints of this nature by giving workers hands-on training.