ActionAid goes internationalActionAid, the innovative charity working to beat world poverty and HIV, launched its international division at a reception held at South Africa House in Trafalgar Square in London last month. Pictured, left to right, are Ramesh Singh, ActionAid International’s new chief executive, Dr Lindiwe Mabusza, South African High Commissioner, Anna Feuchtwanger, chair of ActionAid and Richard Miller, ActionAid UK’s new director. For details, visit: www.actionaid.org |
 photo by nikki kastner Actress Emma Thompson (pictured) said that Aids is the greatest threat the world faces at the UNAIDS Press Conference on Women. Emma told the story of her tours around Africa in Positive Nation 97/98 (December 2003/January 2004). For a review of her starring role in HBO’s ‘Angels in America’, which was shown on Channel 4 earlier this month, see here. |
Actress Emma Thompson joined health experts and equal rights campaigners last month to launch the Global Coalition on Women and Aids.
The aim of the new coalition is to improve prevention and treatment for young
women and girls with HIV and Aids.
The latest figures now estimate that women and girls make up 60 per cent
of Africa’s HIV population. And the percentage is worse among teenagers
where two and a half times more girls than boys are infected. These young
women often become infected by older men, who may be husbands or long-term
partners.
Speaking at the coalition launch on 2 February, Thompson explained her reasons for joining the new network: “Ninety per cent of people with HIV live in Africa, yet 90 per cent who receive treatment live in the developed world. This statistic hit me like a brick on the head. That’s why I joined the Aids awareness campaign. And to express my solidarity with women in Africa.
“ I have a voice because of my acting career. And because I’m not a health worker or politician I can also help by speaking in a very plain and simple language that can get through to the public. We must galvanise the public on this issue.”
Thompson was accompanied by Ludfine Anyano from ActionAid who described her experience of HIV in Kenya.
“ At 26 after good schooling, ABC (Abstinence, Be Faithful and Condoms) messages, and marriage, I got Aids. HIV prevention does not target or help young women like me who have one or regular partners.”
The young positive spokeswoman continued: “I got married very young and my husband brought HIV into the home. I was very dependent on men until my diagnosis. I want to help other women regain a sense of female control in their lives.”
“This Coalition brings hope. Please continue to give women hope,” Anyano
added.
The need for improved women’s rights and access to female protection
(both female condoms and microbicides), an end to sexual violence for girls
and women, as well as greater political empowerment and education for women
and girls in Africa are all high on the Coalition’s wish list.
“ We must create networks of women leaders across the world, from political leaders and activists to business and pharmaceutical professionals,” said Mary Robinson, former president of Eire and now executive director of the Ethical Globalisation Initiative.
“ We have to put this power into the hands of women,” summed up actress Emma Thompson who has visited Mozambique and Uganda for charity ActionAid since joining the Aids awareness campaign in 2001. Rose de Freitas
The campaign website is at www.womenandaids@unaids.org
South Korean delegation visits UKC
Mr Kweon Dong-Suk, director General of the Korean Anti-AIDS Federation
(seated), Mr Lee Chang-Woo, Secretary General of Korean Alliance to Defeat
AIDS (fourth
from left) and Ms Joo Young Park, Director of Education at the Korean Sex
Education Centre (second left), plus supporting staff and an interpreter
heard about
the work of the UKC, the Positive Futures Partnership and strategic partnerships
with Positively Women. |
The Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria reports that pledges have tripled from $1.7 billion in 2002 to $4.7 billion in 2003. Awards made by the fund in 2003 amounted to some $2.1 billion, to 225 programmes in 121 countries. Sixty per cent has been given to projects in Africa, the same percentage being spent on HIV and 23 per cent on combating malaria.
However, funding initiatives are not always straightforward. Implementation is left in the hands of local organisations and grants continue to be made, only when progress has been measured and verified.
Concerned, for instance, with the slow progress of the HIV/Aids prevention and care programmes it supports in the Ukraine, the Global Fund has withdrawn funding from three organisations.
Richard Feachem, executive director of the Fund, said: “We will take action of this kind in future on any occasion that it is necessary to ensure that the results are achieved in any of the programmes we finance” .
Meanwhile, the US continues to pursue a ‘unilateralist’ approach to HIV/Aids by reducing its contribution to the fund from $550 million in 2004 to $200 million in 2005.
Jose Zuniga of the International Association of Physicians in Aids Care, said: “If the Bush administration has concerns about the effectiveness of this and other multilateral initiatives, they are better to articulate them, and to work with the global community to find appropriate remedies.”
And Stephen Lewis, a Canadian diplomat who has been the UN special
representative for Aids in Africa criticised what he called a “decade of financial abstinence” by
wealthy countries.
“
No country, including my own, is paying an adequate share,” he told
delegates at the 11th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections,
held in
San Francisco earlier this month.
The Global Fund needs $3.6 billion this year, he said, and the fair share would be $1.6 billion but the Bush budget calls for only $200 million.
“ There’s something nuts about holding out a begging bowl for an organisation dedicated to confronting and subduing the Aids pandemic,” Lewis added.
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Aidan Keightley, deputy chief executive (pictured left), represented the
UKC and the Positive Futures Partnership (PFP) at a presentation and lunch
hosted
by Elisabeth Crafer, the director of Positively Women (PW) (pictured third
from left), for a delegation of South Korean HIV/Aids professionals. 
Cirque
du Soleil offers job back to HIV positive gymnast