Chairperson, hon Ministers, Deputy Ministers, members in the House, distinguished guests in the gallery, I would like to begin by thanking the Deputy President in absentia for chairing the plenary meeting of the SA National Aids Council in Mpumalanga this year.
This meeting was able to highlight the continuing progress made to date regarding TB and HIV and Aids in South Africa. I would like to focus my speech on the effort of the ANC government in working towards reducing the burden of these diseases in the country.
In particular, we must first applaud the Minister of Health, Dr Aaron Motsoaledi, for upholding the vision of the National Development Plan with respect to TB, HIV and Aids and malaria, as the ANC government and the National Development Plan are paying dividends and we are seeing a reduced burden of these diseases in the country.
But, first, I think it's important that I explain why the incidence of TB and malaria are so high in our country before I lay out the plan devised by the ANC government for addressing these diseases. Health care for blacks, and Africans in particular, was deliberately kept substandard by the racist and apartheid regime.
Huge sums of money were pumped into sustaining the middle-class lives of some citizens, whilst the majority of citizens grew ill from poor health, malnutrition and other poverty-related illnesses including TB and HIV and Aids in poor, rural, township areas and in informal settlements.
As a movement, the ANC's 1955 Freedom Charter called for health care to be available to all South Africans irrespective of their race, class or gender. The Freedom Charter also emphasised the need for a preventative health scheme. The ANC knew that such a scheme would ensure that people would be healthier for longer, and that the occurrence of ailments would be reduced, therefore reducing overall health costs.
More importantly, prevention would have improved the quality of people's lives and would have reduced their suffering. But this preventative health care system only manifested itself when the ANC came into power in 1994 because it cared about the plight of all South Africans.
Ke kopa o ntheetse Rre Waters. Ka nako e e fetileng, pele ga mokgatlho wa rona o busa, batho ba rona kwa metseselegaeng ba ne ba sotlega thata, ba bolawa ke bolwetsi jwa Aids mme ba sa tlhaloganye gore ke bolwetsi jo bo ntseng jang, segolo thata kwa diporofenseng tsa KwaZulu-Natal le Limpopo. Fa ba ne ba tshwerwe ke bolwetsi jo, ebile ba batla kalafi ya jona, ba ne ba bua ka makgome kgotsa sejeso. Fa e sa le mokgatlho wa rona wa ANC o busa, batho ga ba sa tlhole ba nna batlholagadi; le bana ga ba sa tlhole ba fetoga dikhutsana. Jaaka puso ya ANC, ga re sa tlhole re lwantsha tlhaolele, re lwantsha botshelo jo bo siameng. (Translation of Setswana paragraph follows.)
[Please listen to me, Mr Waters. Back in the days before our party governed, our people in the townships suffered a lot as they died of Aids and they didn't know what kind of disease it was, especially in the provinces like KwaZulu-Natal and Limpopo. When they contracted this disease, and as they looked for its cure they referred to it as a curse or another form of witchcraft. Since the ANC took over as the ruling party, the rate of our people being widows has gone down and even our children are no longer becoming orphans. As the ANC government, we are no longer fighting apartheid as we are now fighting for a better life.]
Hence, the ANC and its oversight work were the first to identify that TB was the most prevalent health concern among people living with HIV and Aids and the poorest in our society. The department has responded accordingly by integrating TB, HIV and Aids services owing to the high co-infection rate in the country. More importantly, the ANC has revealed that these two diseases, including malaria, are health challenges directly associated with poverty and structural disadvantages from the previous government.
As such, the ANC government developed the four-year national strategic plan to tackle TB, HIV and Aids, and sexually transmitted diseases, in a streamlined way. As one of its objectives, the SA National Aids Council, Sanac, is working towards reducing HIV infections by half as part of the vision of the ANC government to eventually achieve zero new HIV infections in South Africa. Hence, their budget must enable them to meet their targets.
There are a few reasons why the infection rate for HIV and Aids has stabilised at 10% from 2007 to 2011. One of these reasons is the African Union's Campaign for Accelerated Reduction of Maternal Mortality in Africa, Carmma, which was launched by the Minister of Health in KwaZulu-Natal. The campaign was launched under the banner "No woman should die while giving life" and made South Africa the 37th country to join. We are pleased that the campaign is supported by a staunch activist and dedicated leader, the Chairperson of the AU, Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma.
What will help raise awareness about our goals as the continent are partnerships with local pop stars such as Yvonne Chaka Chaka whose ambassadorial activities lend support to the fight against TB and HIV and Aids in Africa. South Africa's huge mining labour force is drawn from other countries such as Swaziland, Lesotho, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. We are pleased to see that the agreement among Southern African Development Community, SADC, countries such as South Africa, Mozambique and Swaziland to fight TB resulted in an 85% decrease in TB-related deaths.
A key intervention for further reduction will be to test at least 98% of all TB patients for HIV by 2015-16. The Stop TB campaign estimates that each migrant worker who returns home with TB spreads the disease to an estimated 15 people in their community, hence the importance of investing in TB interventions on mines to prevent the further spread of the illness to the family.
TB is a major health problem in prisons as well. Prisoners must be treated to prevent the spread of the illness in the country. Hence, we commend the Deputy President for leading World TB Day for 2013 in Cape Town at Pollsmoor Prison, where high TB rates in the prisons are not being adequately dealt with by the Western Cape government.
A key intervention will be to test at least 98% of all TB patients for HIV by 2015-16. In addition, if we want to continue making progress in the health care of our country, then this must be reflected in the size of the health budget and in the appropriate expenditure of the budget on TB, HIV and Aids, and malaria. Malaria has been a scourge on the continent for hundreds of years and it is only with an escalating research agenda and partnerships with our neighbouring countries that the disease has come under control.
It is only under the leadership of ANC Presidents that health indicators related to these diseases have improved. With the creation of partnerships with different national and international roleplayers, the body of research is expanding, vaccinations are constantly being developed, and Africa rises up to its challenges. We can see that under the leadership of ANC Presidents in government and in the ANC, we have achieved significant accomplishments in the domain of TB and malaria. [Interjections.]
Go feleletsa, ke rata go lebogisa motho wa ntlha go dirisa pilisi ya FDC wa kwa Tshwane, kwa Ga-Rankuwa, yo o rileng, ke a nopola:
Tona, re kile ra ya kwa ditseleng re go lwantsha, mmogo le puso e, lebaka e le fa re ne re akanya fa puso e sa re kgathalele e bile e sa utlwe dilelo tsa rona. Ke itumetse ka letsatsi la gompieno fa ke bona gore ke kgona go nwa pilisi e le nngwe ka letsatsi mme e seng di le dintsi. (Translation of Setswana paragraphs follow.)
[In conclusion, I would like to compliment the first person to use the FDC pill, who is from Tshwane, Ga-Rankuwa, who said, and I quote:
Minister, we have marched to fight you and this government because we thought that the government did not care about us and that our cries fell on deaf ears. Today I am happy to see that I can take one pill a day instead of many pills.]
[Applause.]
The ANC supports Vote No 16. Thank you. [Applause.]