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New line for Swedish AIDS work in SA

05 February, 2008

Helping to eliminate bottlenecks in the implementation of South Africa’s National Strategic Plan and continuing to support rights-based organisations are the main focus areas of the Swedish embassy’s new HIV and AIDS strategy for South Africa.

“The recent shift in the South African government’s practice and political leadership on HIV and AIDS is welcomed by all. However, South Africa now faces the daunting task of implementing the National Strategic Plan, due to a lack of capacity in both government and civil society,” says Dag Sundelin, head of development cooperation at the Embassy of Sweden in Pretoria.

As a result, the main focus areas of the Swedish support will be to help South Africa elminate bottlenecks in the implementation of the plan, as well as continue the support to rights-based organisations that can act as watchdogs in ensuring the rights of infected and affected South Africans.

The overall objectives of Sweden’s support are to contribute both to reducing the further spread of HIV and to mitigating the effects of the epidemic on individuals and society – thus including both treatment and prevention.

Sundelin says Sweden welcomes the tremendous increase in resources available for treatment in South Africa over the last few years. However, he emphasises that the mainstay of the response has to be prevention: “Prevention is the only long-term intervention that will curb the epidemic.”

Addressing gender inequality is another important part of the strategy. “Inequality, especially when manifested through gender-based violence, does not only compromise sexual and reproductive health rights, it also fuels the HIV epidemic,” says Sundelin.

Sweden will continue to work with both men and women to address issues such as discrimination, sexual violence and lack of information and actual chances of protecting oneself, which all increase the risk of being infected with HIV.

The new strategy reiterates Sweden’s commitment to continue to scale up efforts to combat the HIV and AIDS epidemic. It also provides guidelines on the transformation of Swedish grant-based development cooperation with South Africa.

The strategy, which is valid until 2011, is based on the Swedish strategy on HIV and AIDS, Investing for Future Generations, Sweden’s policy for global development, the Swedish embassy’s strategic plan for HIV and AIDS 2004-2008 and the South African HIV and AIDS and STI National Strategic Plan 2007-2011.