STATEMENT BY THE RT HON PRIME MINISTER
DR B.S.S.DLAMINI
AT THE MÉDICINS SANS FRONTIÈRES FIVE YEARS COMMEMORATION
HAPPY VALLEY HOTEL, EZULWINI
WEDNESDAY 14 MAY 2014
Honourable Ministers
Chiefs
Médicins sans Frontières (MSF) President in Switzerland
Médicins sans Frontières (MSF) Head of Mission in Swaziland
Heads of UN Agencies
Honourable Members of both Houses of Parliament
Directors of NGOs
Organizations of People Living With HIV
Health Workers
Representatives of the Media
Ladies and Gentlemen
The French name Médicins sans Frontières is instantly recognisable and understood throughout the world. The organisation could have said Doctors without Borders but perhaps it would not have exuded quite the same charisma – if I may use a Greek word that also needs no translation.
And charismatic is entirely appropriate when referring to Médicins sans Frontières, to whom I shall refer as “MSF” since they are equally well known by that acronym. It is arguably the organisation when we put a name to a world-wide reputation for humanitarian medical assistance, mainly in war-torn countries or ones fighting endemic diseases. This is an organisation that was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999 which has to be one of the highest accolades of any throughout the world.
And it was to help us carry out the formidable task of reducing the savage impact of HIV and TB that MSF came to Swaziland, and specifically the Shiselweni Region, some five years ago. I am very pleased to join you all on this day when we commemorate the five years of excellent service given by MSF to our people.
May I, without further ado, extend a special welcome to our visitors to the Kingdom of Swaziland. The reader of today’s Workshop Programme can be forgiven for assuming that there is a spelling mistake in the name “Switzerland” which is the country from which our special guests have travelled. The Programme in fact carries two remarkable coincidences – countries with very similar names, and both having a landscape renowned for great beauty.
But we would not comfortably use the word “celebration” today since one aspect of this commemoration is to pay our respects to the mothers, daughters, fathers and sons who lost the battle against HIV and AIDS, as happened in enormous numbers in the early days of the pandemic. But we can be proud of the progress we have made in restoring a normal life, and confidence in the future, to those living with HIV throughout the country.
And we are immensely grateful to MSF for its five years of work
in the Shiselweni Region and the significant results achieved. The financial and technical support from MSF has secured a substantial improvement in the health of the people, especially those in the rural communities, through provision of a big programme of funding for infrastructure improvement, health personnel, medical drugs and commodities and other community support.
MSF support to the country came just at the right time, at the peak of the HIV and TB response, when innovative strategies and additional resources were needed to turn the HIV and TB dual pandemic around. The presentations that will be shared today are a testimony to the achievements of this highly productive partnership between MSF and His Majesty’s Government.
How grateful we were at the outset when MSF Switzerland responded so swiftly and positively to our request for assistance. And as a country with a high HIV and TB prevalence, and with a large proportion of HIV-infected, and HIV-affected, people living in the rural areas, it was reassuring to see MSF making community mobilization one of its important strategies. It was so important to recognise that success in turning the pandemic around could only be achieved when each and every individual in the rural and urban communities, made prevention and treatment of HIV and TB their responsibility.
I am also informed that MSF has mobilized communities in the Shiselweni Region to take full ownership of the HIV and TB response and develop solutions that are local and sustainable. The programme has helped to decrease stigma as an access barrier and improve the acceptance of the HIV-positive population in the community.
To the Chiefs, inner council and community members in the Shiselweni Region, I wish to express Government’s gratitude for welcoming the MSF strangers into your communities, treating them well and working with them effectively to control the TB and HIV dual pandemic.
Decentralising ART and TB services to reach the remote areas of the Shiselweni Region has fitted well with Government’s decentralization strategy of bringing services closer to the people in the rural areas and improving service quality in the rural clinics. This broadened access has been directly linked to a steady improvement in treatment effectiveness over the 5 year period.
The example of the MSF approach in the Shiselweni Region demonstrates that in a high HIV and TB prevalence and resource-limited setting, decentralization of treatment services from regional to primary health care and community level is an effective way of improving efficiency in service delivery. I am informed that, over the past five years, MSF has worked with local partners to implement a plan that has integrated and shifted HIV and TB treatment to all 22 clinics in the Shiselweni Region. This has seen more than 15,000 HIV patients, and in excess of 10,000 TB patients, obtain access to treatment much closer to their homes. It is, after all, only natural for a person to feel more comfortable in a treatment programme when this is accessed locally and in one’s own comfort zone. This strategy has, furthermore, been able to reduce substantially the cost of accessing treatment – a huge consideration in a region with extensive poverty.
In addition to expressing Government’s deep gratitude to MSF for its Shiselweni programme and thanking community leaders for their willing and gracious participation, I must voice our huge appreciation to the Shiselweni Regional Health Management Team (RHMT) and the health workers in the Region for providing leadership to MSF as they planned and executed their activities. Right from the beginning, MSF and RHMT have collaborated closely to provide high quality, up-to-date and sustainable interventions that have resulted in a significant improvement in the lives of the people in the Shiselweni region.
I would also like to thank all the other development partners that have worked with Swaziland over the difficult years in the response to the HIV and TB pandemic. It is through their unwavering support and collective commitment to our people that we are seeing such a significant improvement in the health of the population. The people of Shiselweni will be for ever grateful to MSF and all the other implementing partners in the Region and the rest of the country.
It is now my honour, on behalf of His Majesty’s Government, to declare this Workshop on the “Five years commemoration of MSF assistance towards the TB and HIV epidemic in the Shiselweni Region” officially opened. I wish you all the most fruitful analysis and deliberations.
Thank you.
Médicins sans Frontières is pronounced (phonetically)
- Mayd-sann son frorn-ti-yaire