Your daily Selection of IRIN Africa PlusNews reports, 7/10/2003

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U N I T E D N A T I O N S

Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

Integrated Regional Information Network

CONTENT:

1 - SWAZILAND: Data collection an effective weapon in anti-HIV/AIDS

arsenal

2 - UGANDA: Activists push for increased access to HIV/AIDS drugs

1 - SWAZILAND: Data collection an effective weapon in anti-HIV/AIDS

arsenal

MBABANE, 10 July (PLUSNEWS) - A new information gathering programme will

soon provide an essential database of medical and other humanitarian needs

in the agricultural heart of Swaziland to fill gaps in the national

records and bring much needed insight into how to best counter the spread

of HIV/AIDS.

" This is about stopping AIDS at its source and providing assistance to

HIV-positive people, but nothing can happen without information: Where are

the people in need, and what do they require? " said Futhi Msibi, who

helped set up the Total Community Mobalisation initiative in Malkerns, 30

km southeast of the capital, Mbabane.

Malkerns Valley is the pineapple growing district of the country and the

centre of the canning industry, which produces one of Swaziland’s chief

exports.

HIV/AIDS is seriously affecting Swaziland's agricultural sector. Even more

than drought and an outmoded land use policy, national food security is

being compromised by a shortage of both commercial food producers and

subsistence farmers supporting families on communal land.

During the past year, a third of the population was assisted by World Food

Programme (WFP) donations, and a ministry of agriculture report has stated

that the food crisis is likely to continue even if good rains return,

because households now headed by children and the elderly will not have

the labour to cultivate fields.

" The effect on the food processing industry is also acute, " said an

executive from a meat processing facility based at Matsapha, 30 km east of

Mbabane.

At Swazican, the giant canning company at Malkerns, there are no official

records on which, or how many, employees are infected with HIV, but

company officials admit the absentee and mortality problem, attributed to

HIV/AIDS, is severe.

" We need to know which households are infected by AIDS. We need to know

where the orphans are. Who may require institutional care, or foster care,

or if it is better for them to stay where they are in their communities,

in familiar surroundings, and assistance should be brought to them? "

Rudolph Maziya, national coordinator for the Alliance of Mayors'

Initiative to Combat AIDS at the Local Level (AMICAALL Swaziland), told

IRIN.

" Sometimes, we won't want to add to the trauma of uprooting children from

their school and friends after their parents die of AIDS. The Total

Community Mobilisation initiative will tell us the situation of all the

household members, " said Maziya.

AMICAALL-Swaziland is a grassroots initiative by town officials but the

HIV/AIDS crisis is undermining their developmental efforts by decimating

local populations.

The central government seems overwhelmed by the crisis, and the health

ministry has been criticised for its culture of denial about the scope of

the epidemic.

" We have limited data on the effect of AIDS in Swaziland, " said Isabella

Hlope, chief statistician at government's Central Statistics Office. " This

frustrates international donor organisations that need such information to

coordinate assistance efforts. "

Beginning in Malkerns this month, the Total Community Mobilisation

programme aims to create an " intimate relationship " with every household

in the country of approximately 970,000 people.

" The information collectors are all trained and ready to go, " Zelda

Nhlabatsi, Malkerns community coordinator for AMICAALL, told IRIN.

" Youth volunteers are working under information supervisors, using

standard questionnaires. They will be spending an hour at each household,

farm or homestead, getting to know each family. That is not a lot of time,

but they will be returning every month, " Nhlabatsi said.

A comprehensive picture of a family's needs will emerge over the course of

time. Information collected locally will be used to build a national

database to facilitate AIDS containment efforts by government, and health

and social services NGOs.

The initiative is being funded by the National Emergency Response

Committee on HIV/AIDS, a government unit headed by former finance minister

Derrick von Wissell.

Von Wissell this week stunned an audience at a health conference when he

told them the average life expectancy for a Swazi would be reduced to 27

years by 2010 as a result of HIV/AIDS. Life expectancy rose to 61 years in

the early 1990s, when the HIV infection rate was an estimated 2 percent.

The data collectors will not function merely as passive information

gatherers, but will also have an advocacy role.

" The information gatherers will establish close relations with families.

They will become friends. They will encourage household members to take

blood tests, " said Nhlabatsi.

" The traditional community system is not what it used to be and with

urbanisation and AIDS mortality there are fewer long-term neighbours to

look out for each other, " Maziya explained. " If someone is sick, our

information gatherers will assess the medical situation, the condition of

care at a house and medical supplies there. They will organise medical

assistance. "

The data collectors will be dispensing as much information as they

receive. They will distribute AIDS prevention literature and condoms, and

also direct families to health facilities and social welfare NGOs.

AIDS containment efforts have suffered from a lack of reliable information

and the current food crisis has illustrated how dangerous that lack of

data can be.

Famine was avoided this year because the National Disaster Relief Task

force and WFP established a community-based information network, run

mostly by women volunteers.

The process used - gathering information on each member of each household

in affected areas - was so successful that it will be duplicated, first in

the new AIDS initiative in Malkerns, and then nationally.

" We are harvesting information, which will be used to address not just

AIDS containment efforts, but food security, child welfare and other

needs, " said Msibi.

[ENDS]

2 - UGANDA: Activists push for increased access to HIV/AIDS drugs

NAIROBI, 10 July (PLUSNEWS) - Activists in Uganda are campaigning for

increased access to life-saving HIV/AIDS drugs, ahead of US President

W. Bush's visit to the country.

Bush, who will be in Uganda for four hours on Friday as part of a

continental visit, has pledged to spend US $15 billion to tackle the

scourge of HIV/AIDS in Africa.

Members of the Uganda Coalition for Access to Essential Medicines argued

that, although Uganda has been hailed as a success story in the war

against HIV/AIDS, doctors are still forced to turn many AIDS patients away

because they lack the funds to purchase life-prolonging anti-retroviral

drugs.

" A lot of funding has been put towards the fight against HIV/AIDS but

there is very little to show for it on the ground, " Kamara, a

member of the coalition, told IRIN. " Drugs are still out of reach for

people who need them. "

He added that only 10 percent of Uganda's HIV/AIDS patients currently had

access to the drugs.

Uganda has an estimated 1.5 million people living with HIV/AIDS, out of

which 105,000 will need treatment in the next three to four years,

according to figures from the Kampala-based Health Rights Action Group

(HAG). This would require an annual budget cost of US $63 million, if each

patient was to receive drugs at the current offer of US $600 for a year's

treatment.

" President Bush will see for himself the disaster a preventable terror has

caused Uganda, a country with the largest number of HIV/AIDS orphans in

the whole world, " Milly Katana, an advocacy officer with HAG, said.

[ENDS]

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