It is my pleasure to address you all on the commemoration of world aids day 2008 which falls today Monday 1st December 2008. The theme for this year is “Leadership; Stop AIDS: Keep the Promise”. The overall purpose of the World AIDS Day campaign from 2005 to 2010 is to ensure that leaders and decision makers deliver on their promises on HIV/AIDS, including the provision of universal access to treatment, care, support and prevention services by 2010.

In line with the theme, ZRA has kept the promise of stopping AIDS by coming up with a non discriminatory policy on HIV/AIDS. Further, the authority has a prevention scheme mainly propagated by the peer educators trained by ZRA. In addition, ZRA has a voluntary anti-retroviral therapy (ART) scheme. This is a treatment programme for workers and their dependants. In this scheme, employees regardless of their HIV status are encouraged to make monetary contributions to supplement efforts of the authority. For each monthly contribution of k45, 000.00 to the scheme, the authority puts in an equivalent amount on a monthly basis. I would like to take this opportunity to encourage those who are not members of the scheme to consider joining the scheme so that the programme can be effectively sustained.

Ladies and gentlemen, the fight against HIV and aids should not be left to SMM alone. All of us have a role to play, individually and severally. It is only through the efforts of each one of us that the fight against HIV and aids can be meaningfully fought and won.

I am glad to report that as ZRA, our efforts to fight the pandemic have borne fruit as statistics have shown a reduction in employee absenteeism and HIV/AIDS related deaths.
However, we all need to do more, so that there is a further reduction in the prevalence of HIV in the authority.

As we commemorate world aids day this afternoon by watching drama, we should bear in mind that the fight against HIV should not only be on December 1 of every year but should be fought on a daily basis through our individual actions. Let us remember that HIV and aids can be fought through abstinence, faithfulness to our partners and protection through the use of condoms if we fail to abstain. In this way, we shall all play a role in achieving the theme of keeping the promise by stopping the further spread of HIV and AIDS.

Let us all play our part in this fight and we shall conquer aids.

Thank you.