Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I support the words of the previous speaker. I know how she feels because I recently lost a very dear friend under similar circumstances.

In April I went to the IPU conference in South Africa. Whilst I was there, I went with UNICEF to visit one of the programs they run in that country. Before I talk about the program, I would like to give some background, some of the facts and figures in South Africa. HIV is one of the things that are having an enormous impact in South Africa. In South Africa currently, three million women and 300,000 pregnant women are HIV positive. Each year 32,000 children and 400,000 adults die from HIV-AIDS. There are 500,000 new infections each year. Three-hundred thousand people are on treatment, and that figure should be 1½ million people. By ‘on treatment’ I mean receiving retroviral treatment that has actually turned people’s lives around, given them hope and prolonged their life indefinitely.

There are a number of things that people can do to prevent HIV, but the message is not getting through in South Africa. It needs not a one-dimensional approach but a multidimensional approach. Issues like gender, the economy and economic circumstances, the political situation and political opinions, work, social situations within the country, welfare and social justice all impinge on HIV infection and treatment. Real solutions are needed for the problems of South Africa, but those real solutions can only come from South Africa itself.

AIDS is spread to children through infected mothers. Each day in South Africa 500 children become orphans as a result of HIV-AIDS. South Africa has the greatest number of orphans on earth. You have to ask: how does a nation cope with so many orphans? I am going to share with you tonight one way in which it has been coping, a way that gives some hope for the future. In doing so, I would like to pay tribute to the work of UNICEF. I also noted earlier tonight from my emails that UNICEF are working in Burma, and they are asking for some support there. After seeing their program and what they are doing in South Africa, I encourage everybody to get behind UNICEF and do anything they can to help.

The program that I visited was called Isibindi, which is Zulu for courage. It is about creating circles of care. The childcare workers from the community work with orphans. They teach them about budgeting and help them remember their parents by putting together memory boxes. It is a very flexible approach. The childcare workers support the children to enable them to remain in the community in children-led households. Rather than the children being sent off to an orphanage, they are able to stay in the community, and the community supports them to live. The children are encouraged to go to school. The program builds community capacity; it is a social franchising model.

We visited two families in the community. The first was a family of three children—or should I say four, because the older girl had had a child. They were living in a little out-shed, a tin lean-to, behind the main house. The two younger children, a boy and a girl, both attended school. When their parents died, they lived with their aunt and she received child endowment or child welfare payments for caring for the children. But she threw them out, and the welfare workers believe that she kept the payments. These four children were living on 200 rand a month; seven rand equals $1. The level of poverty suffered by that family and the struggle that they went through were enormous. They cannot access the welfare payments that the aunt is receiving, because she has their birth certificates. These payments can only be accessed if you have a birth certificate. But there is good news in this story because the children are together. There is also good news in this story because the community has got behind them and the childcare workers are helping them each and every day to get their life back on track.

The memory box contains photos of their mother and father and a few little mementos that link them to their family. It is pretty sad when kids have lost absolutely everything and their only connection to their past is in these boxes. The boxes, which are so important to the children, are developed within the communities. The youngest of these children, the little baby, is nine months old.

The second family we visited was very different. Isibindi, the program that was running in this community, prevented the young child of this family from becoming an orphan. The mother, Dora, had full-blown AIDS and a virulent strain of tuberculosis. She had been hospitalised and was dying. Because she was so sick, she was ignored by her neighbours. She had absolutely no support. She would talk to people but they did not want to support her. She was in hospital for six months. She told us that there was a particular room in the hospital where people were taken to die. The hospital workers would say to her, ‘You’re going there soon; it’ll be your turn soon.’ However, she started to take antiretroviral tablets, her tuberculosis was cured and she returned to her community. This was a woman who had been ignored by her neighbours. She had felt totally disempowered and had had no-one’s support.

The community now has come together. The childcare workers have worked with Dora over a period and she now has her life back together. The strength of the community, through the circles of care that exist within it, has helped her to get her life back on track and has helped her son too. Her son attends school in the area and hopes to play soccer for South Africa one day. He was a lovely, typical little eight-year-old boy racing around and you could see that there was a very special bond between his mother and him.

The very powerful message that came out of that visit was the importance of antiretroviral treatment and how it needs to be spread throughout the South African community, because there is hope if you have the right sort of treatment. I conclude by saying that UNICEF, wherever they work, do a fine job. Isibindi-Circles of Care—‘isibindi’ is Zulu for ‘courage’—is a fine program; it is one that could be replicated in other areas throughout the world. (Time expired)

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