Suchergebnisse

South Africa has one of the highest rates of unemployment in the world. Job creation is a national priority, yet labor-intensive options are derided by the trade union movement as an unacceptable throwback to the "cheap labor" policies of apartheid, and effectively ruled out by the government in its recent National Development Plan (NDP). Instead, minimum-wage setting in South Africa continues to contribute to job destruction (as evidenced most recently in the clothing industry). Policy-makers hope that support for high-productivity firms and rapid economic growth will make up for job losses and solve the unemployment problem. Unfortunately, South Africa's economic performance has been comparatively disappointing and constrained by negative investor sentiment, especially with regard to the labor market. The NDP has called for a social accord between labor and capital. But the prospects are not promising, and unemployment is likely to remain a significant feature of the South African economic landscape.

Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 6, 'to combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases', is unique among the MDGs because it emerged in the context of unprecedented prior international mobilization, especially around HIV/AIDS, thus both reflecting and facilitating an expanding international health agenda. MDG 6 built on the idea of "health as development", originally articulated at the 1978 conference on primary health at Alma-Ata, but was profoundly shaped by the political traction and fund-raising successes of AIDS activism and the international AIDS response. This underpinned the expansion of MDG 6 targets to include antiretroviral treatment, helped forge partnerships to reduce the prices of antiretroviral treatment and essential medicine, thereby contributing to MDG 8 ("building partnerships for development") and, in high HIV-prevalence regions, also to MDGs 4 and 5 (maternal and child health). The UN High-Level Panel on the post-2015 development agenda recommends setting country-level health targets to achieve healthcare for all. Targets can help citizens hold governments to account by providing a focus for mobilization and a yardstick to measure progress. The data collection and policy monitoring pioneered by UNAIDS, and the involvement and support for civil society organizations achieved through the AIDS response, must be continued for this broader health agenda to succeed.

It is axiomatic that the global fight against HIV/AIDS cannot be won without a decisive victory in South Africa, home to 20 percent of all people living with HIV/AIDS. So how is South Africa doing? And what is the likelihood it will meet the demand for essential prevention and treatment interventions by 2015? On Jan. 21 in Cape Town, Council on Foreign Relations Global Health Fellow Dr. Peter Navario convened a meeting of South Africa's foremost HIV/AIDS thinkers, policy-makers and practitioners to discuss the state of prevention and treatment at the epicenter of the pandemic. In this article, the experts weigh in on program gaps, the major challenges to achieving universal coverage of essential prevention and treatment interventions, and what it will take to surmount these challenges.