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The impact of HIV/AIDS on Southern Africa's Children
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| 11. Looking to the future |
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Scenarios are possible futures. But the advantage of the future is that, within the rules of the game, we can change it. The question is how and where and this is what SCF needs to consider now. One way to do this is to use the framework developed some years ago to look at the impact on government. Here we look at the disease dynamic from HIV to AIDS (the horizontal axis in the figure) and respond to its external and internal impact on government (the vertical axis). Both the epidemic and people move along the line from HIV to AIDS. If the spread of HIV can be contained then there is less need to respond to AIDS. Where there is a serious AIDS epidemic, prevention remains a priority for the uninfected and those who are becoming sexually active.
Figure 8: The Impact of HIV/AIDS on an Organisation: a diagrammatic representation
- Box A concerns internal priorities with regard to HIV. Key is prevention of infection among the staff. Examples of such responses include provision of education and condoms, less common is addressing how the organisation works—for example do they post spouses apart from each other?
- Box B shows the responsibility for the organisation to its “clients”. AIDS control may be part of the activities, but where there is a large epidemic each section or department should look at their activities and consider what they might do differently.
- Box C asks what the impact of AIDS illness and death will be among the organisations employees.
- Box D examines the effect of AIDS on core business. What does the increase in deaths and illness mean for service provision such as education, the ability to supply that education and the demand for it.
Options and Decisions
What can be done to ensure we make the future in the best possible way for the people and specially the children of the region.
What is the role of SCF and what can it do (note that HEARD can not write this—simply give some pointers).
Areas I believe you need to consider are:
- SCF as an organisation—how you treat your employees and the people you work with.
- SCF can demand “AIDS Compliance” from its contractors, see the Debswana example [Barnett et al, 2002].
- The advocacy role in national and international fora.
- The role of SCF in moving other NGO’s and CBOs.
- The issue of gender and HIV.
- At a programmatic level you have a better idea of what you do and how you do it but you might think about targets and scaling up.
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