Appendix

 

Parliamentary Workshop on ‘HIV/AIDS and unpaid work’

Hosted by the Parliament of Barbados

Bridgetown, 4-5 June 2010

Statement to 9th CommonwealthWomen’s Affairs Ministers’ Meeting

Bridgetown Statement

 

We, Commonwealth Members of Parliament, meeting in Bridgetown for a Parliamentary workshop on HIV/AIDS and unpaid care work, from 4-5 June 2010, recognise that,

 

AIDS is a crisis that hits hardest at the household level. At the end of 2008, 33.4 million people were living with HIV, nearly two-thirds of them are Commonwealth citizens, and fifty six percent are women. At the centre of the AIDS response are the 12 million people who urgently require access to treatment, care and support. Eight million people who require treatment but do not have access to it are cared for at home mostly by women and children, especially girls. These unpaid carers are the missing factor in the treatment equation.

 

We emphasise the urgent need to recognize the crucial role of unpaid HIV carers in households, an important link in HIV treatment and care, whose contribution is invisible and remains unvalued. Denial of the role of unpaid carers make families go backward in their level of wellbeing, and the retreat is constant and dynamic.

 

We acknowledge that the global public debt crisis will have a huge impact on HIV treatment and care. The cutbacks will impact severely on institutional and cross-sectoral aspects of healthcare. Consequently, HIV-related advocacy and human rights protections for unpaid HIV carers will be even more essential. It is imperative that we place the unpaid HIV carer in the household as part of the core response to HIV.

 

We further acknowledge that the secondary impact of HIV/AIDS on households is rarely recognised in policy measures and programming. HIV is transmitted intergenerationally where there is a lack of access to medicines to prevent mother-to-child transmission. HIV-positive mothers who do not have access to anti-retroviral treatment are too often cared for by their children, who are then deprived of their chance to go to school and lead a healthy life, both mental and physical. This is particularly urgent if we are to realise the MDGs, each of which is undermined by the growing AIDS epidemic and the public debt crisis.

 

We assert that the impact of HIV/AIDS in the household affects the wellbeing of every household member because:

·         There is no structure to adequately address the unpaid care giver.

·         Their work is ignored and we make unfounded assumptions about what constitutes this work.

·         Formal systems could never cope without these unpaid adult and child carers, most often women and girls.

·         These caregivers are structurally and systemically left out of HIV budget provisions and programmes.

·         The public debt crisis has led to developing country governments trying to cut hospital stays at the same time as coping with the shortage of doctors, nurses, health-workers and care-workers, a situation exacerbated by the poaching of trained workforce by developed countries.

 

A human rights based approach is fundamental to addressing the issues faced by persons struggling with AIDSrelated illnesses and their unpaid carers in the household. We call on countries of the Commonwealth to:

1.      Develop strategic policy structures to address unpaid caregivers with a focus on households

2.      Develop comprehensive HIV Carers’ Action Plans, supported by legislation and focused on unpaid caregivers, as part of holistic Prevention and Treatment Plans developed using a gender-based analysis.