English language version - Human Development Reports - United ...

Mozambique National Human Development Report 2007Box 7.2approaching the country’s development over the nexttwo decades, which are contained in Agenda 2025.Likewise, PARPA II, approved by the Council ofMinisters on 2 May 2006, stresses the need forgreater strengthening and coordination of multi-sectoractivities in response to the deadly disease (Box7.2). The relationship between and relative weight ofprevention and treatment has been placed at the centreof the strategic lines of PARPA II in this specificfield.HIV and AIDS in PARPA IIThe central objective towards HIV and AIDS is to halt and begin to reversethe spread of the disease. Based on PEN II, 2005-2009, it is intended tofocus on some selected results in the following five areas: prevention,stigma and discrimination, treatment, impact mitigation, and coordinationof the national response.The PEN stakeholders are the Ministry of Health, the entire privatesector, and the NGOs that work for a reduction in the spread of the pandemic,and who work with the directly or indirectly affected population,under the coordination of the National AIDS Council.The fundamental goals in this area are:• reducing the number of new infections from the current level of 500per day, to less than 350 in five years, and less than 150 in 10 years;• transforming the response to HIV and AIDS into a nationalemergency;• reducing the stigma and discrimination linked to HIV and AIDS;• prolonging and improving the quality of life of people infected withHIV and of AIDS patients;• reducing the consequences of HIV and AIDS for individuals, families,communities, companies and also the overall impacts;• increasing the level of scientific knowledge about HIV and AIDS, theirconsequences and the best practices for fighting against them;• strengthening the planning, coordination and decentralisationcapacity of the decision taking and resource managementmechanisms;• promoting actions that reduce the weight of home care on women;and,• taking action to prevent the feminisation of the epidemic.An increase is envisaged in the proportion of the State Budget allocatedto specific areas of the HIV and AIDS programme that will implementactivities in the thematic areas mentioned above.In the final analysis, the degree of political commitmentwill be assessed in accordance with achievingthe Millennium Development Goals, particularlythe struggle against absolute poverty and hunger,success in which is strongly dependent on the level ofcontrol achieved against the spread of HIV and AIDSand the combined effects of other associated diseases,such as malaria and tuberculosis.Community leadership andtraditional normative systemsThe socio-economic and political transformationsthe country has been undergoing in recent years,with the civil war, and with the economic opening toa regional and world liberalization, have dictatednew ways of being which tend to generate a conflictof values between the old and the new.This new form is sharpened by the growing deteriorationin household living standards, which isexpressed in weakening the traditional normativeand organizational systems, and in the consequentweakening of their role in responding to the generalchallenges of survival, such as that which HIV andAIDS represents today.This is the social reality, which has been markingincreasingly visibly the distinction between the oldand new generations, as well as between the urbanand rural worlds.Gender relations, the traditional rights of menand of women, the norms about what can be spokenof and what is forbidden, questions of a religiousnature and other human sensitivities, can find treatmentat community level through a complex web cultural,social and political questions that influence thepandemic.The prestige, respect and obedience that generallysurround traditional leaders in their respectiveterritories of jurisdiction and influence, as depositoriesof the local historical consciousness and respectivesocio-cultural values, form a privileged space, aneffective starting point, for community actionsresponding to the challenges that HIV and AIDS representat local level.The relevance of such an approach lies in thefact that the responses communities find locally, veryoften headed by these traditional leaders, are basedon a solid knowledge of the local beliefs and practicesin response to serious crises, such as diseaseand death, over time.The coordinated nationalresponse against HIV and AIDSThe overall national response against this pandemic,in the multi-sector perspective, has been underimplementation since the approval of the firstNational Strategic Plan (PEN) 2000-2002. This documentwas written at a critical moment in the courseof the epidemic in the country and in the world,characterised by discussions, not only about strategicoptions (Prevention vs Treatment), but above allabout the evolution of the question of anti-retroviraldrugs, their manufacture and availability on the mar-46