Wednesday, July 26, 2006

To be fair...

So the Dept of Health came back with a statement to the Business Day article that the Khomanani has come to an end, without a further tender being offered yet.

The DoH believes that several of Khomanani's services will continue to be available until the next tender is offered, then awarded, and the new candidates commence their work and start getting info and services to the public.

I will reserve comment on this statement, but read the follow-up B.D article for a good summary of their statement, and the...um...reality behind such statements.

3 comments:

Champagne Heathen said...

Hey 2F! Did you read the earlier post titled "releasing more anger 0 and oh-so-surprisingly its about the Dept. of Health"?

Basically the DoH has let their HIV Awareness campaign come to a grinding halt and no one is too certain why. They are making excuses. But how can you excuse no government HIV Awareness programmes in a country that has one of the highest infections. It shows complete lack of commitment and concern.

They do not run the Awareness programme themselves but rather pay professionals do it for them, done through tenders. They are promising the next invite for tenders will be released within the next fortnight, but this still requires groups to apply, be accepted & then start planning, let alone start operations.

On this note, my dear boss has just got back to the office from many days travels, and with 15 minutes to go has told me I am presenting at tomorrow's 8am meeting!!!!! Is he mad!?!? I barely know the subject!!

5x7: Gyming my cute little ass off. Body hurts. Even went to yoga at 8.30am on Sunday after getting to bed at 2am the night before, after 12 hours of good drinking. Today's food was chocolate cake. ....it has it's good and bad moments then! We will suceed on this 2f!!

Anonymous said...

Champagne - I had the misfortune to work on the Khomanani campaigns for a while (television) What struck me was how little consensus there was about which messages should be communicated, coupled with massive ego battles. It really made it hard to do the work properly. Chances are, this latest stuff up is also ego related. This seems to be a feature of the HIV /AIDS struggle in the country in general. There needs to be more agreement amongst different camps which would prevent conflicting messages from being sent out to the public. One can hope.

Champagne Heathen said...

Jam, I know! The lack of consensus on anything HIV related, worldwide, is extremely frustrating! And often disgusting. But HIV does have a massive moral element and so it is very difficult.

Also, people know there is lots of aid money pouring into this issue, and they want some of it. Or get into the development world cos they see travel opportunities or an easy opt-out. And once they're into the loop they sit back and slack in anyway possible, mainly through meetings and pushing their uneducated views.

There was a recent UN meeting about the AIDS approach, and it was the only time that right-wing American gov & Muslim Fundamentalists agreed...on what the AIDS Awareness message should be!

It is worrying that there are such mixed messages (Abstain only. Condomise. Awareness made through fear. Rally the men. Etc. etc.) as that is when people confuse facts and accept myths, so making things worse.