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, Barbados, 7-9 June 2010
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.