CPUT HIV/AIDS Unit HOD
Acting Dean of Students
HOD's present
Department of Higher Education Representatives present
CPUT Staff members
SRC members from across the Western Cape Province
Peer Educators
Students
All protocol observed
Humbly receive my greetings
Today's young people are the
first generation that has never known a world without HIV and AIDS.
HIV is more prevalent in South
Africa, than anywhere else in the world. According to the Department of Health
in 2012 more than 12% of the population was infected
Young
people remain at the centre of the epidemic and they have the power, through
their leadership, to definitively change the course of the AIDS epidemic.
One thing
that we fully need to understand and know is what HIV is and how it differs
from AIDS.
HIV is the virus that
weakens a person's ability to fight infections and cancer. People
with HIV are said to have AIDS when they develop certain infections
or cancers or when their CD4 count is less than 800.
Once HIV has entered
the body, it replicates. A virus cannot make a copy of itself on its own; it
needs to invade a healthy cell in your body to survive. HIV targets and invades
CD4 cells. CD4 cells help the body’s immune system and protect it against germs
and viruses that make us sick.
AIDS is the more
advanced stage of HIV infection. When the immune system CD4 cells drop to a
very low level, a person's ability to fight infection is lost. Without HIV
treatment, full-blown AIDS starts to develop. During this last phase of the
disease, the virus severely damages the immune system to a point where the body
can no longer fight a number of viral, fungal, bacterial and parasitic
infections that invade
Having HIV does not
always mean that you have AIDS. It can take many years for people with the
virus to develop AIDS.
Irrespective of many efforts done by the Department of Health to lower
the numbers of new HIV infections still to many people get infected. The department
has made it easy for everyone to have access to contraceptives such as condoms.
New condoms have been established by the department to encourage people
especially the youth to use contraceptives as a way of protecting themselves
from STI’s/STD’s particularly the HI virus. Flavoured condoms; finger condoms;
dental wraps (for oral sex); and femidoms (female condoms) are some of the
condoms that have been introduced. Even so, the vast majority of people in our
country do not know how to use a condom correctly. This is one of the major
contributions to the incline of STI’s/STD’s. The government is doing more than
expected to promote safe sex. Illiteracy cannot be blamed for the incline
of HIV in South Africa.
WHAT’S
THE SOLUTION?
We need to create awareness
to prevent further HIV infections, and secondly, we need to provide care and
treatment to help those already infected to remain healthy and productive for
as long as possible.
We need to adapt a
non-discrimination policy!
Voluntary
counselling and testing are one of the measures we can use to fight this
incline. E.g. taking your partner to a clinic or hospital for an HIV test
together that shows you are responsible.
We need to support
Prevention Programs and stop having a negative attitude towards them. E.g.
condoms
Moving
forward
Bloom describes
Gender-based violence (GBV) as the general term used to capture violence that
occurs as a result of the normative role expectations associated with each
gender, along with the unequal power relationships between the two genders,
within the context of a specific society.
Firstly, we need to
understand the difference between sex and gender. Sex is what you are born
with, whether it is your vagina, breasts or penis. Gender is the way you as an individual
preserve yourself. For example one may be a man but classify himself as a
woman.
While women, girls, men and boys can
be victims of GBV, we will focus on the violence against women and girls for it
is the most common reported.
This is not to say that gender-based
violence against men does not exist. For instance, men can become targets of
physical or verbal attacks for transgressing predominant concepts of
masculinity, for example because they have sex with men. Men can also become
victims of violence in the family – by partners or children. The only
difference is men don’t voice out for they are ashamed of being at as a less
man in society.
The
primary targets of GBV are women and adolescent girls, but not only are they at
high risk of GBV; they also suffer intensified consequences as compared with
what men endure. As a result of gender discrimination and their lower
socio-economic status, women have fewer options and fewer resources at their
disposal to avoid or escape abusive situations and to seek justice.
Forms of violence against women:
- Domestic violence
- Physical violence
- Sexual violence
- Psychological violence
- Threats of violence and harm
- Emotional violence
- Isolation
- Use of children
- Economic Violence
Currently South
Africa ranks number 1 in the entire world for GBV. It’s sad to see the mentality that women are
of less value to men and that women cannot question the man they ought to be
subjective to him for it is their duty as a women to bow down to men. It’s sad
to see the mentality that women ought to be beat up in order for him to prove
his love for her. It’s sad to see women staying in an abusive relationship
because of love. It is even more terrifying when her body leaves their house a
corpse as it could not take any further punishment from him. It’s sad to see
women being called degrading simply because of her gender and sex.
Although I
will not dwell much of it, women are oppressed even by religion. A few months
back in Northern Africa, a woman was gang raped and beat with 200 lashes and
prisoned for walking alone in town for that country or city women are not
permitted to walk alone in town.
We as young
men need to stop teaching young boys to view women as sex slaves. We need to
stop drilling into young boys’ heads that they are sex power hungry humans that
look down upon women. It is sad to go into a township and hear the language 7,
8, 9, 10 year old speak. It freighting Let us groom our boys to take care of
women and treat them the way we would like our mothers, sisters and daughters
to be treated.
Let us do to the world what we want it do for
us. I thank you.
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