By empowering women, we are empowering the nation
As the country celebrates Women’s Month, Health Minister Dr Aaron Motsoaledi reflects on what his department and the government in general have done to improve the quality of life for women
The founding father of our nation Nelson Mandela once remarked: “Freedom cannot be achieved unless the women have been emancipated from all forms of oppression.”
And as we celebrate Women’s Month, it is opportune to pause and reflect what we have done to improve the lives of women, particularly with regard to their health. As some sage once observed, when you teach a man, you empower an individual. But when you teach a woman, you empower a nation.
The government has dedicated this year to honour Madiba and Struggle stalwart Albertina Sisulu. Both would have turned 100 years this year. In addition to the many things that Sisulu achieved as part of her role in the Struggle of our people, she was an outstanding nurse. She understood that health was fundamental in giving meaning to the freedom of our people. Sisulu and others in her generation understood that health was a basic human right which should be made available to all people without regard to their race, their class, their social or economic standing. The idea of providing quality health care to all people is the philosophy behind our universal health plan, the National Health Insurance (NHI).
Under apartheid, men were forced to leave their homes in the rural areas to go and work in the mines, leaving their wives and children behind. Rural areas were underdeveloped and the then government did very little to provide health care to the people living in rural areas, the majority of whom were women. One of the key areas of focus of the democratic government was to address the legacy of apartheid in the provision of health. Consequently, our government built hundreds of new clinics throughout the country to ensure that ordinary people, especially women, have access to health.
Part of the challenge that the democratic government had was to address the economic marginalisation of women. Women empowerment became and continues to be one of the key areas of focus for our government in general and our department in particular. One effective way of fighting women abuse is to give women economic power so that they are not dependent on men for survival. For our part as the Department of Health, we focused more on women in our programmes. We deliberate recruited more women in our programmes of training nurses and also increased our intake of women when we recruited students who were to go and study medicine in Cuba.
Conscious of the fact that in order to change societal behaviour we need to target young people, the department launched She Conquers campaign, targeting young women aged between 15 and 24. The campaign is a positive initiative that locates power in the hands of young women to determine their destiny. It is a paradigm shift. It does not reduce young women into victims.
The campaign targets five areas. The first is to educate young women about the need to stay in school and complete their matric. Studies have shown that young women who stay in class and complete their matric have a better economic prospects and also are less likely to contract HIV.
The second issue is to educate young women about sexual health and to empower them to avoid falling pregnant while they are still at school. The message is straight and simple: It is up to an individual to fall pregnant.
Tied to this message, the campaign also urges young women to test for HIV and stay HIV free by observing the ABC rule – abstain, be faithful and if you have to engage in sex, use a condom.
The third aspect of the She Conquers campaign is to educate young women about gender-based violence. This message is crucial because gender-based violence has been “normalised” in our communities as some people associate this with love. You hear ridiculous stories that love has an element of jealousy and that if “he does not beat you, he does not love you”. Of course this is utter nonsense but we need to educate our young women to love themselves enough and to reject any forms of abuse that can even threaten their lives.
The fourth component of the campaign deals with economic opportunities. One of the reasons our young women are exposing themselves to the spread of HIV by having sexual relationships with older men, the so-called Blesser phenomenon, is money. These young women want money to buy airtime, or to make their hair, or buy fancy clothes and latest cellphones. This is a serious problem. We need to educate our young women to understand that they can better their economic status through education and should not fall prey to men with ill intentions who just want to exploit them for their shortterm pleasures.
The last area of focus for the She Conquers campaign is teenage pregnancy. Again, what we are saying to these young women is that their future is in their hands. We can deliver free condoms but it is an individual choice to use them. In fact, smart young women would choose to abstain from sex until the right time.
The Health Department has done a lot to improve the quality of life of women. We have secured real gains in reducing maternal deaths. Through our accelerated anti-retroviral therapy, we have also reduced motherto-child-transmission of HIV significantly. Before we rolled out the Prevention of Mother-to-Child Transmission (PMTC), more than 70 000 babies were born HIV-positive each year. That number has been reduced to about 4 000 babies.
We have introduced vaccine of cervical cancer and have immunised thousands of young women. We have empowered women to take charge of their reproductive health through giving them female condoms. In addition, women have a right to terminate pregnancy.
We have also introduced advanced methods of contraception, the subdermal implant. More than one million women are using this form of contraception. It is effective for up to three years. While women can pay up to R2 000 for the subdermal implant in the private sector, we are offering this service for free in our public health care facilities.
Through this form of prevention, women are empowered to follow their careers or to study by avoiding unplanned pregnancies.
As part of monitoring the health status of pregnant women, the Health Department has introduced Momconnect, a service which uses cellphone technology as a platform to create awareness among pregnant women about available services for them and and information about their infants. More than 1,4 million women have been registered on this service.
We have also had a campaign to educate women about the need to breastfeed their babies. In terms of this campaign, we are increasing public awareness that women should be free to breastfeed their babies any where.
This was necessitated by the behaviour of some people who did not want women to breastfeed in the public. Why is it okay for people to enjoy their meals in the open, in restaurants and when the baby has to be fed, that baby should hide? This campaign will empower women to freely breastfeed their babies anywhere and anytime.