December 2, 2009 – In an article marking World AIDS Day, The AIDS war can be won, Times Live columnist Raenette Taljaard speaks of the impact of a Nelson Mandela Foundation HIV/AIDS community conversation she attended.
Describing the “counting your losses” tool used at the community conversations, Taljaard explains how the participants in the conversation were invited to build a mound of stones, each representing someone they knew who had died of HIV/AIDS. As the pile grew, the participants were “united in our silence, in our sadness and in our sense of belonging to one another through this shared experience of loss”.
Her article calls on South Africans to continue “fighting the disease that threatens our collective future”, echoing the message of the Joint World AIDS Day statement from the Commonwealth, UNAIDS and Institute for Global Health, issued at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Trinidad on World AIDS Day this year.
While both articles caution that the battle against the disease is far from over, they voice optimism about winning the war.
The joint statement applauds the progress that has been recorded since the launch of World AIDS Day in 1988. The statement attributes success to “advances in science and medicine, changes in funding, and the courageous and persistent demands of people living with HIV” as well as the essential role of public information and education campaigns.
Taljaard’s hopes are boosted by the work of the Foundation, which held 120 community conversations in 2009, as well as by South African President Jacob Zuma’s new administration, which has indicated a fresh resolve to combat HIV/AIDS.
“We have emerged from a dark period of denialism and new levels of leadership hold the promise of change,” she says.
The challenge is for us all to become engaged in the struggle against the disease so that “successive generations that can live free of HIV/AIDS,” she concludes.