April 29, 2005

By Ndaba Dlamini

THE Ekurhuleni Metro has faced up to the challenge of tackling the HIV/Aids pandemic with a multipronged approach - involving both residents and municipal employees.

This issue of HIV/Aids - one of Executive Mayor, Duma Nkosi's key priorities - is one of the central concerns of the Metro, which has set up a specialised unit just to focus on the co-ordination of the multi-sectoral programme to benefit the Ekurhuleni employees and communities, according to its website.

"A review of all legislation, both national and provincial, on the HIV/Aids programme as well as a review of existing HIV/Aids policies and programmes of the (former) local councils during 2000 was necessitated by the devastating effects of the epidemic," says Maria Hlonipho of Ekurhuleni's Aids Unit.

And as a result, Ekurhuleni established its Aids Unit and launched the Ekurhuleni Aids Council in 2001 and 2002 respectively.

The unit, says Hlonipho, has made headway in tackling the epidemic by:

• running an Employee supportive Programme, offering confidential capacity building on counselling services to Metro employees;
• running community information workshops;
• offering education and awareness seminars to promote behaviour change;
• supporting departments by providing information, promotion material and technical advice.

"The programmes implemented so far have produced positive results. We have managed to reach out to a considerable number of people in the metropolitan in our fight against HIV/Aids," Hlonipho says.

Since the implementation of these programmes, 947 community members have been trained as HIV/Aids community caregivers and 25 employees received training as HIV/Aids facilitators for the Employee Assistance Programme.

For more information on Ekurhuleni's Aids programmes click here or contact the Aids Unit on 011 871 7781 or 011 871 7756.

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