Turning a Crisis into an Opportunity: Strategies for Scaling Up the National Response to the HIV-AIDS Pandemic in Lesotho - Official Launch by the Prime Minister, Mr. Pakalitha Mosisili

TURNING A CRISIS INTO AN OPPORTUNITY: STRATEGIES FOR SCALING UP THE NATIONAL RESPONSE TO THE HIV/AIDS PANDEMIC IN LESOTHO

OFFICIAL LAUNCH
BY
THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
PAKALITHA BETHUEL MOSISILI, MP PRIME MINISTER

’MANTHABISENG CONVENTION CENTRE,

MASERU

5 MARCH 2004

His Majesty King Letsie III

Honourable Speaker of the National Assembly

Your Excellency, the UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy on the Humanitarian Crisis in Southern Africa, Mr James Morris

Ladies and Gentlemen

On behalf of His Majesty King Letsie III, the Government and people of Lesotho and, indeed, on my own behalf, I welcome you all to this very important occasion. In doing so, I wish to invite our Esteemed Guests to enjoy

the warmth and traditional hospitality for which Basotho are well known. We are, indeed, honoured that during your short visit, you have made time, in your busy schedules, to witness the official launch of the publication “Turning a Crisis into an Opportunity: Strategies for Scaling Up the National Response to the HIV/AIDS Pandemic in Lesotho”.

Your Excellencies,

The United Nations Millennium Development Goals prioritise the HIV and AIDS pandemic as one of the major health and development challenges for Africa in general, and the SADC region in particular. The pandemic is decimating our productive populations and resources. It is reversing the major socio-economic gains of the past decades in areas such as health, agriculture and education. Lesotho is among the six countries of Southern Africa most affected by the humanitarian crisis fuelled by poverty, unemployment and HIV and AIDS. With an HIV and AIDS prevalence rate of 30% among the 15-49 age group, Lesotho is the fourth most severely affected country in the world. And 60% of these infected people are part of the productive workforce. Truly, a sobering statistic.

Sub-Saharan Africa, with the highest incidences of HIV infection, is forced to divert its scarce resources from supporting productive activities into the socio-economic sectors impacted by the pandemic. Furthermore, the HIV and AIDS pandemic is one of the greatest threats to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals and Targets. Simply put, we cannot reduce poverty and hunger, achieve universal primary education, reduce child mortality rates, improve maternal health, promote gender equality and empower women, ensure environmental sustainability, or effectively participate in the development of a Global Partnership for Development, unless we fight and defeat this pandemic. It was in recognition of this that the SADC region convened an Extra-ordinary summit on HIV and AIDS, which Lesotho was privileged to host in July, last year. The summit culminated in the Maseru Declaration through which Member States reaffirmed their commitment of combating the HIV and AIDS pandemic in all its manifestations.

Concerned that despite various efforts to curtail the spread of the pandemic, infection rates have continued to rise and have reached crisis proportions, the Government of Lesotho has declared HIV and AIDS a national disaster, and has continued to use every opportunity to exhort all to do everything in their power to help control and manage this disease.

His Majesty’s Government has adopted the publication “Turning a Crisis into an Opportunity: Strategies for Scaling Up the National Response to the HIV/AIDS Pandemic in Lesotho”. We are gathered here, this evening to attend this momentous occasion of the official launching of this very important document.

This document is intended to inform the policies and activities of Government and all key stakeholders with regard to the HIV and AIDS pandemic. Through this document, the Government is committed to scaling up the fight against the pandemic and to shifting the national response to a multi-sectoral and multi-stakeholder paradigm. This will provide for a more effective framework for intensifying and coordinating the nation’s response to the HIV and AIDS pandemic and for core streaming our interventions within the wider national development programmes. To this end, the Government is seriously considering a proposal to transform the Lesotho AIDS Programme Co-ordinating Authority into a semi-autonomous National Commission established and mandated by legislation.

Allow me, as we launch this document to briefly outline some of the major strategies that it proposes:

This virus does not only impact on those who are infected by it; it impacts on all of us. Therefore, each of us has a role to play, no matter who we are: Members of Parliament, traditional leaders, local authorities, traditional healers, initiation school proprietors, people living with HIV and AIDS, the youth of this country, the men and women of this country, the Church, non-governmental organisations, the business sector, cultural and conventional mass media, you and I. All of us are stakeholders in this process, and we have mutually-reinforcing roles to play in the Scaling Up agenda. As citizens and residents of this country, we each have something that we can and must do to combat this scourge.

Therefore, we all need to marshal our individual and collective resources and skills, and mobilise them to ensure that every Mosotho and resident of Lesotho is HIV and AIDS competent. “Every person has a right and a responsibility to know their rights and responsibilities in the fight against HIV and AIDS”.

We must each know our HIV-status, so that, if we are negative, we can protect ourselves from infection. And if we test positive, we can courageously take measures to prolong our lives and to protect those closest to us. Herein lies the urgent need for universal testing. It is all about living in a responsible manner.

3. Assist those who are already infected to live longer, and better quality lives:

We must provide counselling, support, antiretroviral therapies, and generally act to ensure that we improve the lives of people living with the virus. In this way, being infected need no longer be a death sentence. It should, instead, mean a little more discipline in accepting certain changes in one’s life. Afterall, we all have our chronic illnesses.

4. Ensure that all of us take immediate steps to core-stream HIV and AIDS within all our policies and programmes:

For Government, this means that HIV and AIDS will be placed at the centre of all Government business. So, the National Vision (popularly known as Vision 2020), the National Goals and Objectives, the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP), the Public Sector Improvement and Reform Programme (PSIRP), and any other policies, programmes, strategies, implementation plans or budgets, should be cognisant of, and reflect, the centrality of HIV and AIDS in our lives, and the urgent need to win the battle against it.

5. Accelerate transformational change in our society, with particular emphasis on reforming the Public Service:

The way in which we have hitherto conceived of the Public Service, the ways in which Public Servants have thought of themselves and their roles in relation to society, and the services offered by the Public Service, all of these need to be radically transformed. This transformation will be informed by the challenges brought about by HIV and AIDS and will impose on us adequate flexibility to deal with any other challenges that present themselves in the future.

6. Make a commitment to e-government as a core strategy which compensates for the attrition of human resources that is caused by the pandemic:

We all recognise the increasing importance of electronic governance (e-governance) in the 21^st Century. The more importance we place on our ability to serve Basotho better by mastering these new technologies and putting them to work for our benefit, the better able will we be, as a Nation, to compete with others.

7. Strengthen the existing development management and oversight arrangements in order to underpin the setting of clear targets for what will count as successes in the Scaling Up agenda

There is an urgent need for the development of more effective and efficient implementation, monitoring, oversight, transparency and accountability by individuals and institutions.

Despite the common Sesotho saying that, “’Muso ha o tate”, which literally translates that “There is no hurry in government”, we have begun in earnest to implement the Scaling Up process:

§ The highest echelons of government take the opportunity of every public gathering to exhort all Basotho, young and old, to do all they can to halt and reverse the pandemic.

§ In addition to the annual budget allocation to the Ministry of Health, Government allocates 2% of the annual Recurrent Budget of each Ministry to finance HIV and AIDS programmes. This has been put to a variety of uses, such as the provision of prophylactics; the holding of advocacy workshops; and the provision of counselling, medical and other support to Public Servants in accordance with their individual needs. The funds have also been used by some Ministries to provide nutrition support for orphans and other vulnerable households;

§ Focal Groups have been set up in each Ministry to steer forth the core streaming of HIV and AIDS. Training of these groups has already begun in some Ministries.

§ Parliament has established two Select Committees on HIV and AIDS, in the Senate and in the National Assembly;

§ A workshop which I officially opened to kick start the Scaling Up process, was held in Qacha’s Nek in December, 2003.

§ And tomorrow we launch universal voluntary testing in Qacha’s Nek to add impetus to our fight against HIV and AIDS.

It would be remiss of me if I concluded my remarks without recognising, with profound gratitude and great appreciation, the presence amongst us of:

§ Mr James Morris, the UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy on the Humanitarian Crisis in Southern Africa;

§ Ms Carol Bellamy, the Executive Director of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF);

§ Dr Jacques Diouf, the Director General of the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO).

Your presence amongst us makes us feel blessed as a Nation. It does not happen easily, or often, that four of the most senior UN personnel should visit a developing Nation at the same time. Your presence, Your Excellencies, gives us, as Government, and the entire Basotho Nation, a lot of courage and confidence that we are not alone in the pursuit of the Millennium Development Goals in general, and in the fight against HIV and AIDS, in particular. This cooperation will assist us to implement the UNAIDS goal of “three million infected people in treatment by 2005”, colloquially known as the “3 by 5” strategy. Your Excellencies, our population is only just over two million. If indeed, we were to succeed at the 3 by 5 strategy, we would have wiped out the pandemic in Lesotho by 2005!

I am also delighted that you will be joining us tomorrow in Qacha’s Nek where together we will launch the process of universal voluntary testing. I would like to take this opportunity to welcome you ahead of time to my home district.

Furthermore, I wish to extend our gratitude to our Development Partners for their strong support in our development programmes in general, and to our fight against HIV and AIDS in particular. In this regard, we wish to express our gratitude to the Expanded Theme Group on HIV and AIDS for their invaluable input into the development of this strategy document which we are launching tonight.

Master of Ceremonies,

The direction has been set. The process of implementation has begun. I challenge you all, Basotho and residents of Lesotho alike, and our Development Partners, to find a place and a role for yourselves in this process. We must act decisively and stop all prevarications. And the time to act is now.

It is now my treasured duty to present the document “Turning a Crisis into an Opportunity: Strategies for Scaling Up the National Response to the HIV/AIDS Pandemic in Lesotho” to the Nation and indeed to the world as the official Government framework for scaling up the fight against HIV and AIDS in our beloved Mountain Kingdom.