adminto promote awareness, fight prejudice and improve education on HIV and Aids.
World Aids Day is important in that it reminds us all that HIV has not gone away, and that there are many things that still need to be done to conquer it.
According to UNAIDS estimates, there are now 34 million people living with HIV and Aids in the world, the bulk of whom are in the developing world. Last year alone some 2,7 million people were infected with the virus, including an estimated 390 000 children.
Despite a significant decline in the estimated number of AIDS-related deaths over the last five years, there were still an estimated 1,8 million Aids-related deaths last year.
These are alarming figures that bid us all to intensify the fight against the pandemic, and as our relative success in bringing down the prevalence rate has shown, major successes are scored on the back of behaviour change.
And it is here that our leaders, at all levels of endeavour, need to lead by example inorder to inspire the grassroots that look upto to them.
The events of the past two weeks where one of our leaders, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai was reported to have impregnated 39-year-old Locadia Tembo, do not inspire the behaviour change we want.
PM Tsvangirai admits paying lobola for Ms Tembo but has since dumped, her amid reports of many other women in his life.
All in leadership are role models to those who put them there, and all those who work under them. Their behaviour has, of necessity, got to be exemplary.
This explains why the national World AIDS Day committee comprising various stakeholders, under the co-ordination of the National AIDS Council, unanimously adopted a theme focusing on the leadership.
This year’s theme – ‘‘Getting to Zero-Leaders make universal access a reality” which entails Zero new HIV infections, Zero stigma and discrimination, Zero AIDS related deaths, which they post fixed with the campaign message bids all in leadership to reflect.
We challenge our leaders, particularly in politics, to lead by example and help promote voluntary testing and counselling and fight stigma by taking public HIV tests to show the grassroots the importance of knowing one’s status.
Others have done it before. South African President Jacob Zuma recently launched one of the most ambitious voluntary counselling and testing campaigns by disclosing his HIV-negative status. South African ministers and provincial premiers have been following his example.
Former Botswana president Festus Mogae became one of the first leaders to be publicly tested for HIV and encouraged ministers and parliamentarians to do the same.
Zambia’s founding president Kenneth Kaunda made headlines with his public test and, like Mogae, used the opportunity to rally others to follow suit. Kaunda openly admitted to losing a son to HIV-related complications in the 1980s and later founded the Kenneth Kaunda Children of Africa Foundation, which runs schools for children orphaned by Aids.
Our parliamentarians here did it before. The cast of the soap, Studio 263, did it it along with musicians like the late Tongai Moyo.
To this end we challenge the political leadership, particularly PM Tsvangirai – given the many women he has been linked to and reportedly impregnated – to set a good example this World Aids Day by taking public HIV tests to influence behaviour change in a positive way.
Online Reporter