Compiled by Martin Flynn and Bruce Wainwright
Rape victims in Rwanda get UK funding
Some 2,500 HIV positive women in Rwanda, many deliberately infected
during the genocide of 1994, should benefit from a £4.25 million grant
from the UK Department for International Development (DFID). The capacity
of four local health clinics offering HIV-Aids and outreach services will
be improved, and benefit the families and orphans which the women often support.
Mary Blewitt (left) of the Rwandan Survivors Fund (SURF) is pictured with
widows of the genocide, six of whom are HIV positive, only one of whom is
on antiretroviral therapy. www.survivors-fund.org.uk
Canada has undertaken to double its contribution to the Global Fund to fight
Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Its 2004 contribution to the fund was US$50
million and its 2005 contribution increases to US$112 million.
Fund executive director Professor Richard Feachem, said: “To meet our
current commitments, we will need US$2.3 billions in 2005. By 2007 we estimate
our financial needs at US$3.6 billions. We encourage other countries to follow
Canada’s lead.”
Such encouragement is unlikely to be well received in Washington, where the
Bush administration is refusing to give US money to HIV projects that encourage
condom use or go against his abstinence solution to the epidemic.
US Aids organisations cannot now use federal grants to provide health services
overseas unless they also pledge opposition to prostitution, as part of a
broader Republican effort in recent weeks to apply conservative values to
foreign assistance programmes.
A Republican dominated Congress has also pressed the administration to pull
funds from organisations that encourage clean-needle programmes overseas for
intravenous drug users.
Many Aids organisations are reluctant to condemn prostitution because they
work closely with prostitutes on health initiatives such as distributing condoms.
Official condemnation would, it is felt, increase women’s isolation,
making it harder for them to receive Aids prevention and treatment services.
This dispute marks an escalation in the debate about attaching moral strings
to US foreign aid. Until now, that battle has centred largely on whether US
aid should go to groups providing abortion counselling and services overseas
At home, cuts in federal funding for antiretrovirals means that in several
US states waiting lists are getting longer and more people are getting sick
and dying.
Many millions of the sick, mainly poor blacks, women and Latinos, are routinely
denied basic medical care in the richest country on earth.
Former co-ordinator of the UK Consortium on Aids and International Development
Mick Matthews (pictured) has now joined the Global Fund to Fight Aids, TB
and Malaria in Geneva to act as liaison officer with civil society groups
around the world. For details, visit: www.theglobalfund.org
The Indian government is bowing to pressure from the US and pharmaceutical
companies to fall in line with World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules.
It is poised to change India’s intellectual property laws and curb production
of cheap generic drugs used in the developing world.
“This ordnance cannot and should not stand,” said Paul Zeitz,
executive director of the US-based Global AIDS Alliance.
Indian drug companies, like Cipla and Ranbaxy, which have hitherto been making
generic Aids drugs and selling them for less than $1 per patient per day to
the poor in Africa and Asia, will be hit.
But this also means millions more will die from Aids worldwide because poor
countries simply cannot afford to use western pharmaceutical branded products.
Aids activists across the world are up in arms about a policy which will lead
to the death of millions so that giant pharmaceutical companies can further
increase their profits. Meanwhile India is failing its own HIV positive population.
With over five million people infected with HIV/Aids, India is second only
to South Africa in the seriousness of its health crisis. The epidemic is still
largely concentrated among high risk groups, such as sex workers, and truckers
who travel nationwide.
Among the sex workers are the hijras: one million eunuchs and transsexuals,
some of whom have been emasculated, who are now being encouraged to use condoms.
In return, hijras in the state of Tamil Nadu are demanding help in getting
ID cards and jobs outside the sex industry.
Prejudice makes the task of addressing HIV/Aids more difficult. In the village
of Dharasana, where the leader of Indian independence, Mahatma Gandhi, practised
passive resistance against the British, 37-year old Sumitra Patel was recently
found murdered.
Forced to live outside the village community, she was hacked to death by relatives,
according to local police, simply because she was HIV positive.
Even the village elder admitted to the press that they shunned her because
of her HIV status and tried to drive her out.
One in eight (24,000) of the 300,000 people registered with HIV in Russia
is now in prison.
At Prison No 1, in Ryazan Oblast this February, another beating by guards
became the last straw for five prisoners with HIV who slit their wrists in
what they called “an act of self-defence”.
A majority people with HIV in Russia are drug users, often convicted of possessing
small quantities of drugs. Inadequate nutrition and a lack of access to antiretrovirals
means a death sentence for many. And co-infection with TB and hepatitis makes
the problem worse
Imprisonment for possession of legally insignificant quantities should, however,
no longer be possible for many users, due to a recent change in Russia’s
criminal code.
But according to the Department of Corrections, Ministry of Justice, fewer
than half of those now entitled to release have, so far, been set free.
Government figures say over 300,000 people have been registered with HIV in
Russia since 1987. Of this number, 1,285 have Aids and 900 have died. 26,000
are in Moscow region and 25,000 are in St Petersburg.
But UNAIDS estimates the true figures of people living with the virus are
10 times higher than numbers released by the Kremlin.
HIV activists from the Russian FrontAIDS movement blocked the entrance to
the Ministry of Justice in Moscow last month to draw attention to the problems
plight of people with HIV in prisons.
Students from 100 colleges and universities across the US demonstrated in
Washington last month to draw attention to the HIV and Aids crisis.
Tonia Obsy, who drove 16 hours from De Paul University in Chicago to attend
the rally, said she believed the US had “an ethical obligation” to provide resources to under-developed countries.
Across the world hundreds of student and youth groups demonstrated on 28 February
for more action from government leaders on Aids.
More than half of the five million people who get HIV each year are young
people aged 24 or younger.
For details visit: www.sbcglobal.net
“This is the first case of Aids in the village. We were quite scared
of coming in contact with her. Aids is a killer disease and anyone can be
infected, so we ostracised her.”
Shailesh Bharwad, from the Indian village of Dharasana.
“An Aids vaccine is not around the corner. We are just going to
keep funding until there is one.”
Bill Gates of Microsoft.
“There is an urgent need for the development of safe and effective
microbicides. While condoms offer protection against sexually transmitted
infections, their effectiveness is limited because they require partner initiation
or consent.”
Report from Mount Sinai School of Medicine, Boston.
“It’s not that you were promiscuous, it is that you trusted
somebody and had unprotected sex.”
Karen Barlow, in The World Today.
“A new ideology of evil that is insidiously threatening society.”
Pope John Paul II on same-sex marriages.
“The determination of some gays - a minority, but a substantial
one - to disregard all the rules for safe sex because being gay, they think,
means you don’t have to follow any rules at all. That’s just plain
dumb.”
Richard Cohen, columnist in The Washington Post.
“This is a prejudice-based policy, not an evidence-based one.”
Lisa Power, of THT, commenting on Conservative immigration policy.
