Anyone working in HIV knows that factors such as increased rural to urban migration, poverty, gender-based violence, inter-generational sex, alcohol and substance abuse and stigma and discrimination combine to create increased vulnerability to HIV and TB infections. Research has shown that the HIV epidemic flourishes on social inequality and marginalisation, which perpetuate, amongst other factors, imbalances in gender relations. Researchers, programme managers and policy-makers alike agree that we need to move away from a single approach to HIV prevention to focus more on combination prevention strategies that bring in these social and structural approaches as core elements in the response to the HIV and TB epidemics.
Against this backdrop, the South African National AIDS Council has established the Social and Structural Drivers Technical Task Team (SSTTT). Its critical role is to examine, measure and evaluate complex social and structural drivers of the epidemics. Those serving on the committee are the ‘brain trust’ of SANAC and comprise some of South Africa’s social and structural interventions experts. Their responsibility will be to guide SANAC through the latest evidence and best practice.
The SSTTT is chaired by Ms. Lebo Ramafoko, chief executive officer of the Soul City Institute for Health and Development. Ramafoko is also known for her role as a social activist and feminist who speaks out against all forms of abuse and gender-based violence, having been a survivor of the latter ill herself.
The mandate of the technical task team is to generate and analyse the multiple and ever-changing structural factors that influence the spread of infection; suggest recommendations for programmatic and policy responses; ensure that policy makers understand the social changes brought about by HIV and AIDS and simultaneously look at how social change has impacted HIV and AIDS; ensure the development of an analytical framework of what might be effective in different settings (ways in which stakeholders and programme managers can respond to the specific set of multiple structural factors influencing the groups’ risk and vulnerability); ensure that the best possible package of interventions is selected for the local target populations; review broader structures shaping behavioural risk and vulnerability; and tailor-make responses to the factors influencing risk and vulnerability understood to affect the target populations.
Nditsheni Mungoni is the Senior Manager: National Strategic Plan Implementation at SANAC.
Rentia Agenbag is Government Support and Programme Review Manager at SANAC.