Maravi

AIDS and our human rights

AIDS and our human rights
By The Post
Thu 02 Dec. 2010, 04:00 CAT

This year World AIDS Day was commemorated with a rather strange theme: Universal Access to Human Rights. Truly, HIV/AIDS is a human rights issue. We say this because there are many rights for persons with HIV/AIDS that require protection such as the basic freedom from discrimination. This includes the freedom from discrimination in areas of health care, employment, education, and so on and so forth. People with HIV/AIDS deserve equal and adequate access to the means of prevention, treatment and care as part of their right to health care. They also deserve the right to privacy.

This includes physical and informational privacy. The informational privacy entails freedom from compulsory HIV testing, including mandatory testing before employment, medical services, admission to educational institutions and so on and so forth. This right also includes confidentiality of HIV test results. People living with HIV/AIDS have the right to education and information. This implies equal and adequate access to prevention education and information.

This may entail integrating HIV/AIDS prevention education at primary, secondary and tertiary levels of education. People living with HIV/AIDS have the right to freedom from inhuman or degrading treatment. This includes freedom of HIV positive prisoners from automatic isolation. People living with HIV/AIDS have the right to equal access to scientific advancement and its benefits. This includes equal and adequate access to treatment drugs and a safe supply of blood.

They also have the right to work. This implies freedom from dismissal solely on the basis of their HIV status. The freedom of expression: this might include public testimonies of the affected individuals in information and education campaigns for HIV/AIDS. And like all other human beings, they have the right to marriage. This entails freedom from mandatory premarital testing and coerced abortions and sterilisations.

Clearly, protection is needed in respect of coerced testing for the HIV virus and unfair discrimination in the workplace. The impact is magnified where people are infected in their prime productive ages, but are dismissed, despite their ability to work for a long time.

This theme is important because it also reminds us of promoting the welfare and rights of children with HIV/AIDS and those orphaned because of AIDS. Even now many children die of AIDS, having been infected by their HIV positive mothers while still in the womb or at birth. If we cannot save them, at least we must try and spare them pain and distress as much as possible. We must give them as much love as we can. They are capable of receiving love and recognising those who love them. This gives meaning to their short lives and makes living, if only for a few years, worthwhile for them. Even children with a life expectancy of no more than a few years have a right to life. Moreover, not every child born of an HIV positive mother will be infected with AIDS. Many of such children have a chance of being born healthy and without any infection.

And despite some evidence that the epidemic may have reached a plateau in our country, there remains an urgent need for an integrated response from all sectors. We say this because HIV/AIDS still remains an overwhelming developmental challenge in our country. About 14.3 per cental of our adult population are HIV positive, with levels of women infected standing at 18 per cent and that of men at 13 per cent. Mother-to-child transmission also contributes significantly to the disease burden. According to UNICEF, over 20,000 infants are newly infected each year. It is estimated that 920,000 people in our country are infected with HIV. And the number of persons dying as a result of AIDS is estimated at 89,000 per year, leaving behind a growing number of AIDS orphans currently estimated at 801,000. Nevertheless, new cases appear to be declining as high risk sexual behaviours become less common. But despite declining incidents, mortality still continues to climb.

And only 13.4 per cent of our people know their HIV status. This is too low a figure and calls for more work, vigilance in the continued fight against HIV/AIDS. There should be no room for complacency. There is growing emphasis on several interventions such as behavioural change, especially among the youths, and circumcision. It is said that this may help reduce the infection rates by about 60 per cent. But there is a danger here if vigilance is lost because young people may start to think this is a licence to indulge in unsafe sex and risk getting infected.

We should help foster universal access to treatment for people living with HIV/AIDS. There is still need to ensure that more people are covered in terms of ARVs. Currently, there are only 98,000 people accessing drugs when we have over 920,000 people infected with HIV/AIDS. There is need to increase the number of people who have access to drugs, especially in the rural areas. And it is time we introduced a third line of drugs to help those that have become resistant to first and second lines of drugs. The third line is very expensive and many of our people cannot afford it. It is therefore necessary that government steps in to provide these drugs.

Special attention needs to be paid to the sick in our prisons. Our prisons need special attention when it comes to the prevention of the spread of HIV/AIDS as well as drugs for those that are already infected. And this is why we find this year’s theme – Universal Access to Human Rights – very important and timely because this whole issue is about the human rights of our people that are infected or affected with this virus.

We have not done very well in managing financial resources donated to us by the international community. There is overwhelming evidence that even our well-known champions of the HIV/AIDS fight have not fared well on this score. Funds donated to us have been mismanaged, misapplied, misappropriated, misused in all sorts of ways. There is need to address this issue. All the issues raised in the recent audit by the Global Fund need to be addressed and were possible made good. We need to start looking at the sustainability of our HIV programmes. We need to start looking at how we can directly, as a country, support HIV programmes in the long-term. Currently, almost all our HIV programmes are donor financed and driven. What will happen when donor fatigue sets in? These are issues that our political leaders should start addressing seriously.

Labels: HIV/AIDS, WORLD AIDS DAY

posted by MrK @ 7:33 AM