Time for the Next Steps

There are many ... important and pressing issues relating to HIV/AIDS and children in South Africa. This book has concentrated on the symptomatic impacts and responses to them. Serious consideration needs also to be given to the underlying problems in society, which have lead to these problems and in some ways the impacts. Why are so many adults and children living in poverty? Why are the health, welfare and education systems already so strained? Why has the socio-economic and political environment allowed, and at times promoted, the spread of HIV? Why does macro-economic policy constrain public spending in the midst of a disaster? In the absence of adequate inter-generational provision for the future of AIDS-affected children, Cohen (2000) observed: 'A generation is thus emerging with poor health status, few skills (not even those necessary for rural development), low levels of literacy and numeracy, little or no access to financial and other real assets (where their property and other rights will often have been infringed), and who has been deprived of the normal processes of socialisation and social inclusion.' The time for action to reverse these impacts more effectively is now.