South Africa: AIDS Drive Gets a New Life

On Wednesday, South Africa's government announced it has relaunched its HIV/AIDS communications campaign, Khomanani, after the health department let its contract with service providers expire last July.

Health Department Director-General Thami Mseleku defended the time lag between the expiration of the earlier contracts and the award of new ones, saying the government needed to evaluate the project before asking for bids. The government's tender rules allowed only one three-month extension on expired contracts. Therefore, Khomanani's initiatives had lapsed after last September.

The evaluation determined that the campaign would expand beyond its initial HIV/AIDS focus to include information on tuberculosis and antiretroviral medicines. "One of the major areas [we identified] was the fact that government was getting criticism with regard to making available information around treatment and care," said Mseleku. "So that is why we wanted to clearly isolate the elements, so that there was no ambiguity about what we were trying to communicate."

The campaign's five communication themes are HIV/AIDS prevention; care, treatment and support; nutrition and HIV/AIDS; health promotion; and TB and HIV.

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