ECONOMY MELTDOWN HITS AIDS FIGHT

The economic meltdown in Swaziland looks likely to impact on the kingdom’s ability to fight the HIV epidemic.

Revenue from the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) contributed 76 percent of the Swazi government’s income in 2009 but dropped in 2010 and is expected to continue declining over the next decade.



Rather than put aside some of the revenue generated by SACU while it was plentiful, the Swazi government went on a spending spree and ignored warnings from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that its public sector bureaucracy was bloated far beyond the needs of a small country of one million people.



‘Today we sit with no savings or new receipts. We’ve dug ourselves into a pretty deep hole, according to the IMF. It’s serious, very serious,’ Derek von Wissell, director of the National Emergency Response Council on HIV/AIDS (NERCHA), told the IRIN news agency.

Khaled Ahmed of the Health Economics and HIV/AIDS Research Division at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, Ahmed, who has written an issue brief on the health expenditure implications of a decline in SACU revenue, predicted that in future Swaziland, which has the world’s highest HIV prevalence rate, will face ‘a chronic shortage of funding for HIV/AIDS programmes’.



‘When you have a high percentage of government revenue coming from a source that will decline over the next few years, it’s only natural that programmes will have to be cut,’ he told IRIN.

In the absence of a strong private sector economy and a paucity of international direct investment in the country, the government is unable to replace mismanaged and now dwindling SACU receipts with revenue from other sources, and has turned to borrowing from the Central Bank of Swaziland to meet its wage bill.



Finance Minister Majozi Sithole has given a qualified assurance that health-related programmes will be spared the axe. ‘Regardless of the crisis we are in, the health as well as the education sectors will not be affected by most of the changes that will follow,’ he told a recent meeting of local bankers.



But the economic crisis comes at a time when the AIDS situation in Swaziland requires a larger than ever amount of resources. According to Ahmed and his co-authors, Harold Ngwalala, and Alan Whiteside, also of the University of KwaZulu-Natal, ‘the cost of care and treatment for people living with HIV and AIDS as well as support for those affected, applies pressure to already tight budgets.’



Swaziland is heavily dependent on foreign donors to finance its AIDS programmes. Asked whether donors might fill the gap left by an increasingly insolvent government, Whiteside expressed doubt. “[Swaziland] has received money from the Global Fund [to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria] and it has support from PEPFAR [the US President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief] and the European Union. Many of the other bilateral donors need to hang their heads in shame at the fact that they are overlooking the BLNS [Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia and Swaziland] countries, especially in the light of this catastrophic fall [in SACU revenues],’ he said.



He added, ‘It may be that HIV is less affected because it is ring-fenced funding. But can you tell me which of the donors has said `we’ll provide you support for the next 10 years or even the next five years?’ All donor funding fluctuates and is unreliable and while HIV may be slightly protected in the short term, the health of the nation isn’t protected at all, and in the long term it’s catastrophic.’



Ahmed agreed that the assumption that donors will step in to limit a humanitarian catastrophe might be wishful thinking. ‘Lobbying for increasing aid is probably a short-term solution because agencies like PEPFAR are flat-lining funding. In the medium to long term we’d always advise that there has to be a restructuring of the fiscal framework and to look for other sources of domestic revenue,’ he said.

To read the full IRIN report, click here.

CHILD SEX PRINCE NOT SCARED OF HIV

The 60-year-old Swaziland Royal Prince at the centre of a child sex allegation says he is not afraid of getting HIV, the virus that leads to AIDS.

Prince Logcogco, the chair of Liqoqo, the shady, but powerful, group that advises King Mswati III,

sub-Saharan Africa's last absolute monarch, says the problem of HIV in Swaziland is exaggerated and there is an international conspiracy by drug companies to make sure a cure is never found.

The remarks by Prince Logcogco (also known as Prince Logcogco Mangaliso) were made in an interview with the Times of Swaziland, the only independent newspaper in the kingdom, ruled by King Mswati, Logcogco’s cousin.

Prince Logcogco boasted of his many sexual conquests. He said he did not live his life wondering how he would die but rather lived each day as it came, avoiding being reckless though.

‘I am not scared of HIV,’ he said.

Prince Logcogco is in the news this week because of a row he is having over custody of a child he fathered with a teenage girl. As I reported yesterday (17 August 2010) it seems he had sex with the teenager when she was under the age of consent and as such he has broken the law in Swaziland and, according to the Girls’ and Women’s Protection Act could face 24 lashes and a jail term. Media in Swaziland have so far ignored this aspect of his custody dispute.

He told the newspaper, as long as one had a body with all the senses and hormones, it was difficult to be pure and not have casual sex.

He said he would never encourage people to have one sexual partner or not to have concurrent sexual partners because that would be devoid of the reality on the ground.

He said the reality was that Swazis were having sexual intercourse with different people amid the ‘exaggerated’ threats of HIV.

He said the pharmaceutical industry was using the scourge of HIV to amass wealth.

‘This industry is making a lot of money and if there was no HIV there would be a lot of people who would lose business. What is now happening is that they are making so much exaggeration about HIV/AIDS so that they can keep their businesses afloat.’

In ordinary circumstances, one wouldn’t take much notice of someone as ignorant of the reality of HIV as Prince Logcogco, but his social status in the kingdom, as a ‘senior’ prince and also as chair of Liqoqo, gives him enormous influence in Swaziland.

As is the case of so many commentators who use the Swazi media to peddle their prejudices, Prince Logcogco chooses to ignore the facts if they allow him to justify his own despicable behaviour.

Here are the statistics on AIDS in Swaziland, courtesy of James Hall, ‘The Guinness Book of the Decade, covering 2000 to 2010, lists Swaziland with the highest death rate in world, 22,1 deaths per 1000 people per annum, for the period 2005 to 2010.

‘The popular reference work also cites Swaziland has having the highest rate of death from AIDS: 145 5 persons per 100 000 annually.

‘At an event to mark World Population Day last week, Khanya Mabuza, Deputy Director of NERCHA, said the estimated figures on the rate of deaths related to AIDS might be even higher than officially reported. NERCHA estimates 7 862 deaths in 2008 out of a population of around one million, and 7123 deaths in 2009.’

SWAZIS WON’T CHANGE SEX BEHAVIOUR

In a kingdom with the highest HIV infection rate in the world and the lowest life expectancy, experts are still at a loss as to why Swazis have resisted all attempts to change the behaviours that put them at risk from the virus.

The ABC (Abstain, Be Faithful, Condomise) approach has guided Swaziland’s HIV prevention efforts for years, but has dismally failed to slow the spread of the virus.

“If you look at the increase of HIV in the country while we've been applying the ABC concept all these years, then it is evident that ABC is not the answer,” said Dr Derek von Wissell, Director of the National Emergency Response Council on HIV/AIDS (NERCHA).

Von Wissell has called for new approaches and is hoping to get some answers from a countrywide study looking into Swazis’ sexual behaviour being undertaken with the assistance of the World Bank.

For more of this report from the Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN) click here.