House Chair, hon members, it is very important to understand that the scientific evidence doesn't say that circumcision is the be-all and end-all. It is not necessarily a panacea. Scientific evidence simply shows that circumcision reduces the chance of infection by between 50% and 60%. We still have to encourage people to use condoms and other measures. It is still very important, but when you put all these things I have mentioned, together, we believe it will actually help.
The next intervention is the massive prevention-of-mother-to-child transmission programme. It is a treatment programme but also a prevention programme at the same time and it is also important. The next programme concerns safe blood transfusion. In this case, I can assure you that we are winning. Two months ago I officially opened a state- of-the-art unit at the SA Blood Transfusion Service with funds donated by the President's Emergency Plan For Aids Relief, Pepfar, to make sure that blood in South Africa is safe. Today, I can put my head on the block and say that it won't be easy for someone to get HIV/Aids from a blood transfusion or from any of our hospitals. It will only be as a result of an accident.
The last programme is the postexposure prophylaxis programme, which MEC Dhlomo mentioned. At the moment, when a woman is raped and she goes to our health institutions asking to be protected from HIV/Aids because she doesn't know the status of the rapist, she would usually be sent back to the police to report the case and look for case numbers. The instruction we gave to the CEOs of hospitals is that any woman who enters a hospital claiming to have been raped must be treated first and questioned later. That is all we are saying. [Applause.]
Many children are being abandoned, but we don't know their status. All the children that have been abandoned must immediately be tested and, if they are positive, treated, in line with what the President said on World Aids Day, namely that all the positive children below one year of age must be treated without even their CD4 count being known.
Last is the issue of life skills, which is going to be followed up very closely. These programmes, when taken together as a package, form our prevention strategy and they appear on the presentation that we have made.
Hon Marais, I am not sure whether I am misquoting you, because sometimes when members speak Afrikaans I listen to the interpretation. If what I heard over the interpretation is wrong, it is not my fault; I responded to what I heard there.
Before you start talking in public about people from the Eastern Cape who come and cause problems in the Western Cape, etc, I am going to ask you about The Lancet report you have mentioned. The Lancet is a very prestigious British medical journal. They don't just write any report there. When they write a report it is very, very clearly scientific.
If you study the report, you will find that one of the professors who did the research is a paediatrician. He is a professor of paediatrics and child health. He gave a historical background as to why the Western Cape is experiencing and getting what it is getting. It is very historical and very scientific. I am not going to teach you that. Before you say people are moving here to come and cause trouble, please go and read it. It appears in a medical journal and is very clearly researched. It will help you very much. Next time when you speak in public, you will know what you are talking about. I am not sure about the last issue, hon J J Gunda. You know, I have actually been phoned by many doctors who said that we have taken everything. I don't understand what they mean. All we did was acquire 1,3 million doses of what is called a trivalent vaccine for H1N1. Trivalent means it has the strain of H1N1 and two strains of seasonal influenza. We bought those from the pharmaceutical industry. We are going to get the other 3,5 million doses from the World Health Organisation as a donation. So we are going to vaccinate these groups of people I have mentioned.
Now I am getting calls from the private sector saying that we have taken everything. I don't understand what they mean, because we ordered those doses long ago. I suspect the private sector did not plan very well and they want to blame government. We just bought 1,3 million doses because we needed those for pregnant mothers, for children who are HIV-positive, for adults who are HIV-positive, and for people living with chronic heart disease and lung disease. You are aware of the fact that they were being killed by H1N1 and that we needed to protect them. So, let the private sector manufacture more, and then all of us will have enough. Thank you.