R4D Managing Director Delivers Keynote on AIDS Financing in Southern Africa
Addressing over 100 attendees at a regional conference in Johannesburg, Robert Hecht shared his vision for AIDS Financing in South Africa.
On August 24, R4D Managing Director Robert Hecht delivered the keynote address to over 100 attendees at a regional conference in Johannesburg of leading AIDS, health, and finance officials from the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) on the theme “Sustaining the AIDS Response in the Context of Shrinking Resources.”
The challenge and opportunity
During the address, Hecht highlighted the special challenges confronting the SADC countries, where AIDS spending needs could exceed 5 percent of GDP by the year 2015. Despite this dire situation, Hecht took an optimistic view, emphasizing that policymakers still have a wide range of choices in how they tackle AIDS in the next few years. “Wise decisions today will pay tremendous dividends in the future,” he noted, illustrating how different approaches to spending on HIV prevention and AIDS treatment will carry dramatically different price tags for the SADC countries. Another key effect will result in different impacts on the number of new infections, persons on AIDS treatment, and those experiencing AIDS-related illness and death.
The 15 SADC countries (Angola, Botswana, Congo, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe) are home to more than a third of the 33 million HIV infected persons worldwide, and account for more than half of all new infections and of those needing AIDS treatment today. As a result of the unprecedented severity of the pandemic in the sub-region, a number of the SADC countries face a severe financial crisis in their efforts to scale up an effective national program of prevention, treatment, and orphan care services.
Hecht’s presentation drew heavily on R4D’s pioneering work on AIDS financing policy under the aids2031 project, and on in-depth case studies sponsored by R4D and conducted by national teams in South Africa and Cambodia. aids2031 was established in 2008 as a high level international consortium of partners, bringing together multi–disciplinary teams to question conventional wisdom, uncover new evidence, and encourage debate and action. Click here for a copy of the aid2031 global report.
Call to action
Hecht closed his remarks by calling on the senior officials from the SADC countries, as well as their external donor partners, to create strong interdisciplinary national teams combining experts from across health and finance ministries and national AIDS councils. “By coming together at this historical workshop,” said Hecht. “You are taking a giant step in the direction of wresting control of your national destinies in fighting and defeating AIDS in the coming decades.”
He went on to urge them to use these teams and a suite of new analytical tools that can help policy makers choose from a range of practical alternative “scenarios” for fighting AIDS.
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