WORLD AIDS DAY: MAKE IT MEAN SOMETHING

I remember the very first World AIDS Day. I participated in a demonstration organized by the local chapter of ACT-UP outside a World AIDS Day breakfast where members of various organizations congratulated themselves for their “work” on AIDS. Those of us who protested thought a big breakfast was a strange way to commemorate a disease that was killing millions. I still don’t understand the thinking of such events.

Anyway…

This year’s World AIDS Day theme is 'Keep the Promise', but Africa Action notes that the U.S. and other rich country government continue to break their promises to provide greater funding and support for African efforts to combat HIV/AIDS:

* In 2003, President Bush promised $15 billion over 5 years to help turn the tide of HIV/AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean. Despite the urgent need for such support, much less than half of this money has been appropriated so far, and this funding is not intended for Africa and the Caribbean specifically - it is for all HIV/AIDS programs globally.

* The Global Fund is a critically important vehicle in the fight against HIV/AIDS in more than 125 countries, but despite earlier promises to support this initiative the world’s rich countries continue to fall short in their funding. At the September 2005 donor conference, donor pledges amounted to only $3.7 billion, which is insufficient to fund a new round of grants to support life-saving prevention and treatment programs in Africa and elsewhere.

* Just this week, the World Health Organization apologized for failing to meet the international goal of providing treatment to three million people by the end of 2005. This important "3 by 5" promise was not kept because of the unwillingness of the international community to provide the financial and logistical support required, and because of the continuing high cost of AIDS medicines.

* African governments have promised to spend 15% of their national budgets on health as a part of their commitment to combating HIV/AIDS on the continent. But many governments have been unable to keep this promise because of the huge burden of illegitimate external debt and the massive outflow of resources in the form of debt service payments to rich country creditors each year.

Africa Action today highlighted the ongoing role of the pharmaceutical industry in limiting access to essential HIV/AIDS treatment. This evening, Africa Action will host a screening of the film 'Pills, Profits, Protest' in Washington, DC to focus on HIV/AIDS treatment activism around the world and to engage a discussion on the human toll of the pharmaceutical industry’s greed.

Tonight’s screening of the film 'Pills, Profits, Protest' will take place from 5:30pm to 7:30pm at TransAfrica Forum, 1426 21st Street, NW, in Washington, DC. The screening will be followed by a discussion about the current state of treatment access in Africa and the role of pharmaceutical companies in limiting access to essential HIV/AIDS medicines.

Africa Action’s Executive Director Salih Booker said, "In Africa, where more than 25 million people are living with HIV/AIDS, access to anti-retroviral treatment is a matter of life and death. But the prices charged by pharmaceutical companies, and the policies pursued by rich countries at their behest, continue to keep life-saving treatment out of reach for those most affected by HIV/AIDS."

Booker added, "The Bush Administration insists on protecting the profits of the pharmaceutical industry by using only expensive, patented drugs in its HIV/AIDS treatment programs instead of lower-cost generic versions that could provide treatment to three times as many people."

Ann-Louise Colgan, Director of Policy Analysis & Communications at Africa Action notes, "The latest UNAIDS report emphasizes that only one in ten Africans in need of anti-retroviral treatment are now receiving it. Unless there is a change in the drug companies’ behavior, and in the policies of the U.S. and other countries that support their interests, the promise of universal access to HIV treatment by 2010 has little hope of being realized."

Marie Clarke Brill, Director of Public Education & Mobilization at Africa Action said, "The right to health is a basic human right, and for people living with HIV or AIDS, access to treatment is a critical component of this right. When effective treatment options exist, it is unconscionable that these be kept out of reach for millions of people living with HIV/AIDS in Africa."

The American Friends Service’s Committee’s Life Over Debt Campaign also commemorates World AIDS Day with something other than an awards banquet. It is instead placing an emphasis on holding governments and the international community accountable to honoring their commitments to stop AIDS.

AFSC points out that 25.8 million Continental Africans are infected with HIV/AIDS; making up over half of the worlds 40.3 million people with the disease. Given that reality the AFSC says it is untenable for the IMF and World Bank to force indebted and impoverished African nations to complete a program of controversial, rigid and often damaging economic reforms in order to be eligible for debt cancellation.

AFSC says, “This process deems only 14 Africa countries eligible for cancellation, leaves 33 African countries in critical need of debt cancellation and exasperates the African healthcare crisis in all of sub-Saharan Africa. As a result, Africans continue to pay billions of dollars annually to service predominately illegitimate debts, at their own expense.”

AFSC says canceling the debt for the entire continent is a major part of the solution to the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

Finally, AIDSmap reports on this World AIDS Day, the European Union has issued a strongly worded attack on US approaches to HIV prevention in developing countries. In particular it targets US reluctance to supply condoms to young people who, American policy makers believe, should be encouraged to abstain from sex before marriage.

“HIV prevention requires that governments and communities have the courage to confront difficult issues in an open and informed way. We understand that in many settings there is a cultural resistance to openly discussing sex, sexuality and drug use. We are profoundly concerned about the resurgence of partial or incomplete messages on HIV prevention which are not grounded in evidence and have limited effectiveness.”

“We, the European Union, firmly believe that, to be successful, HIV prevention must utilize all approaches known to be effective, not implementing one or a few selective actions in isolation.”

The statement emphasizes the need for universal access to sexual and reproductive health information and services for women, men and young people, including people living with HIV and AIDS. It stresses that people should have access to a full range of reproductive choices, in line with policy agreed at the Cairo UN Population summit in 1994, which affirmed that abortion was a national policy issue. The US Congress has insisted that no money from its PEPFAR treatment program can be used to fund programs that offer abortion or counseling on abortion, effectively preventing the use of US funds to integrate HIV prevention activities into reproductive health services.

The US has also insisted that two-thirds of the money earmarked for prevention in the PEPFAR program should be spent on programs that promote abstinence from sexual activity.

Although the statement has been widely and justifiably interpreted as an attack on US prevention policy, the EU is also implicitly critical of countries like Russia, where interventions targeting injecting drug users are still impaired by politically motivated restrictions on provision of clean injecting equipment and substitution therapy. Sources: AIDSmap, American Friends Service Committee, Africa Action