Heaids Conference



Conference Chair



Conference Chair: Dr Yogan Pillay

Theme: “Ukuhlonyiswa Kwabasha” Empowering our youth in South Africa

The theme of the HEAIDS Conference is related to empowering our youth in South Africa to join the nation in sharing innovative practices towards health education, health promotion, knowledge generation and capacity building amongst our youth within the post school sector. South Africa has never needed it as much as now-especially in the education sector. We are delighted to welcome delegates from all over South Africa to the HEAIDS Conference, first of its kind gathering scheduled for 9-10 June 2017 in Durban, South Africa. This conference is unique as it will bring together a wide range of delegates to interact and share emerging good practices on HIV, STIs, TB general health and wellness issues as they are cross cutting to the achievement of our core educational outcomes in South Africa.

We must all be aware that this conference is an important marker on our road to achieving our goals, considering the following core milestones made so far:

  • Recent Launch of the Young Girl and Women’s Campaign to empower our young “vulnerable populations” and ensuring they fight against sexual and gender based violence amongst other risk factors;
  • The review of the current South African National Strategic Plan on HIV/STI/TB; and
  • The recently adopted 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 2030 that South Africa is a signatory to that will not only transform the world over but ensure that the Education sector joins other sectors in reaching the 90,90, 90 UN targets.

We must be cognisant of the successes we have achieved so far including the fact that the response to the HIV, STIs, TB pandemics in South Africa is no longer a health challenge alone but impacts all sectors of our society including the post schooling sector of South Africa, covering the 50 TVET colleges and 26 Higher Education Institutions. We therefore need to build on these successes and ensure that the most vulnerable and hardest hit population by HIV, STIs, TB in South Africa is supported through comprehensive prevention, treatment, care and support programmes.

We look forward to a productive discourse that will lead to broad consensus on what we do and how we use the knowledge we are gaining in ensuring prevention, treatment and care reaches all, most importantly the younger generation of South Africa-which is our future.