The Life Officers Association (LOA) – which represents the life insurance industry in South Africa – last week, announced that it is scrapping HIV/AIDS exclusion clauses for new applicants for long-term insurance cover from January 2005. This decision means HIV/AIDS will, in future, be treated the same as other medical conditions like diabetes or cancer. As we mark World Aids Day today, we should celebrate this major victory for the SACP-led financial sector campaign. This is an important step towards ending discriminatory practices in regard to HIV.
This victory is one of several indications of the extent to which our financial sector campaign is gathering pace. Since we launched the campaign four years ago, and since the signing of the financial sector summit agreements two years ago, there has been some decisive movement forward. The launch of Umzansi account, which has seen more than 100,000 new account holders depositing R34 million in just three weeks, is a direct result of our struggle to ensure that everyone has access to affordable banking. The Department of Trade and Industry will soon publish regulations to govern the credit bureaus. Legislation on co-operatives and co-operative banks has been tabled before parliament. We have now established a representative Financial Sector Charter Council and it is busy engaging on the finalisation of targets for housing, investment in infrastructure and agriculture, and broad based black economic empowerment.
Earlier in the year the banks also dropped the requirement of HIV/AIDS tests for mortgage bonds, thus making it possible for many of our people who were previously excluded to get access to housing. Unfortunately, the banks have been extremely coy about publicizing this positive step; they fear a flood of applications. It is important for those of our people, particularly in the low-income housing sector, to take these opportunities opened up by their very own struggles.
We have notched up important advances. However, there are still many struggles that lie ahead to ensure that all the agreements in the financial sector charter are fully implemented and properly monitored. In particular, we need to intensify struggles around workers' control over their retirement funds, the role of public development finance institutions, and an end to loan-sharks, including curbing of exorbitant interest rates by microlenders. This can only be effectively done if driven by mass struggles on the ground, thus emphasising the need to establish provincial and local structures of the SACP-led Financial Sector Campaign Coalition.
In marking World Aids Day, we should also note that the advances towards ending HIV/AIDS based discrimination by the insurance industry remain inadequate. Welcome as it is as a first step, there are a number of very serious contradictions and limitations in this latest decision by the LOA.
South Africa's insurance industry is worth R163.8 billion. HIV is estimated to affect about 5,6 million South Africans. The LOA decision to amend the LOA HIV testing protocol to disallow the use of exclusion clauses for new business is now mandatory for all members of the LOA. This applies to all types of policies, including group life.
Historically, the industry has taken a conservative view and denied insurance cover to people with HIV. The exclusion clauses in the policies meant people who were HIV-negative when they applied for cover received no benefits if they became infected at a later stage and died of AIDS, even if they had been paying premiums for many years! Insurers claimed this was partly due to difficulties in "pricing the risk associated with the virus". It was not until political pressure was brought to bear by mass organisations, including our Financial Sector Campaign Coalition, that the industry made any attempt to overcome these "risk assessment difficulties".
We welcome the long-overdue decision but condemn the insurance industry for taking till 2004 to comply with the constitution. It is a vindication of the Financial Sector Summit agreements on ending discrimination on basis of HIV/AIDS. In August 2002, after mass struggles led by the FSCC, we had agreed with the insurance industry that:
"The parties are particularly concerned about the need to end unfair discrimination against people with HIV and develop appropriate services for them. Following the Summit, they will work together to achieve this end, and especially to ensure that people with HIV have improved access to housing finance and other services."
However, this change by the LOA is still only a partial victory. The insurance industry is still discriminating against existing policy-holders because the scrapping of exclusion clauses applies only to new business. We now call on insurers to make this decision retrospective and extended to everyone. Never again must a policy be repudiated because the policy-holder has HIV/AIDS or did not disclose their HIV/AIDS status.
This however raises serious questions about the lack of overall transformation in the life industry and the failure of the multibillion rand industry to serve the needs of our people. According to recent research findings:
only 11% of the population older than 16 have a formal life insurance policy,
only 15% have a funeral policy with a big institution
only 20% of the population contribute to a burial society
21% of the population either don't know about long-term insurance or have never thought about it
only 9% (of those surveyed) have a pension fund, with 7% having a retirement annuity
Of fundamental importance is the need for sustained mobilisation to pressure the life insurance industry to prioritise the fostering of sustainable livelihoods for workers and the poor, rather than narrowly serving the interests of the capitalist sector.
The struggle against the HIV/AIDS pandemic is a critical component of the struggle for sustainable livelihoods, sustainable households and sustainable communities.
Of course, as the SACP we are not confining our approach to the HIV/AIDS pandemic to the struggle to transform the financial sector. Over the last several years there has been a critical and legitimate struggle for anti-retrovirals. The SACP supports this struggle, but we need, collectively, to guard against the anti-retroviral struggle overshadowing all other dimensions of the anti-HIV/AIDS struggle.
On this World Aids Day we should commit ourselves to people's mass action to promote awareness, prevention, treatment and the end to all forms of discrimination against those who are HIV positive. The SACP's 2005 programme of action commits our party to escalating mass struggles on all these fronts, as part of the struggle for sustainable livelihoods and communities.
Communist Cadres to the Front… To defeat the HIV/AIDS pandemic, with and for workers and the poor!
In Other News: Hu Urges Eliminating Bias Against AIDS Patients
Chinese President Hu Jintao on Tuesday called on all members of society to show care and love for AIDS patients and eliminate any forms of discrimination against HIV carriers and AIDS patients, so that all AIDS victims can "feel the warmth of society".
The top Chinese leader made the remarks in the "Home of Love" – a non-governmental organization dedicated to AIDS prevention and treatment in the Beijing You’an Hospital. In the hospital the president visited AIDS patients, shook hands and talked with them, and saluted the medical workers and volunteers who work there.
Hu, who is also general secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), urged governments and Party Committees at all levels to get fully aware of the importance and urgency of AIDS prevention and treatment in China, saying that governments at all levels should put AIDS prevention and treatment high on their work agenda and mobilize all sectors of society to fight the fatal disease.
"China has in recent years made encouraging progress in AIDS prevention and treatment. But the country is still facing a grave situation in this regard, and the Party and the whole of society need to make further efforts," Hu said.
Hu said governments at all levels should popularize AIDS prevention knowledge among the public, advocate a civilized and healthy lifestyle, and constantly improve citizens’ awareness and ability of AIDS prevention, so as to effectively curb the spread of HIV/AIDS.
"The government should provide medical treatment and aid for HIV carriers and AIDS patients, safeguard their legitimate rights and interests, and help them overcome difficulties in their lives," he said.
The president encouraged medical workers to, in the spirit of humanitarianism, shoulder the responsibility of treating AIDS patients, assiduously study AIDS treatment expertise, and make innovations to better help AIDS patients to fight the disease.
Premier urges "unremitting efforts" in anti-AIDS war
In preparation for the 17th World AIDS Day, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao recently called for "unremitting efforts" in the country’s anti-AIDS campaign, while making an important statement attached to a report by the Ministry of Public Health on the progress of the country’s HIV/AIDS-prevention work.
In his message, Premier Wen, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, paid cordial tribute to all HIV carriers and AIDS patients in the country, showed lofty respect to all medical workers dealing with the deadly HIV/AIDS, and sincere thanks to people from all walks of life who have cared and supported the HIV/AIDS prevention efforts, according to Ministry of Health sources.
China has made "remarkable progress" in its HIV/AIDS prevention and control work, acknowledged Wen, but the country still faces a stark situation in this field. He urged government departments at all levels to "give priority" to the issue, by "utilizing all sorts of resources and conscientiously implementing all preventive and control policies and measures."
He called for still greater, substantial efforts in creating public awareness about the issue and making strenuous efforts to curb the spread of HIV/AIDS.
World AIDS Day falls on December 1.
Last year, Premier Wen marked the day by paying a visit to AIDS patients and shaking hands with them at a Beijing-based hospital.
Earlier this year, the State Council set up an HIV/AIDS Prevention Committee, issued a specific decree and hosted a national conference on the issue. China has also launched a nationwide campaign against the illegal blood collecting and supply business.
On July 9 this year, before the opening of the World AIDS Conference (July 11-16), Premier Wen published a signed article calling for combined efforts from the whole society for prevention and control of the deadly disease.
