HIV/AIDS:
Cry for Funds and Mixed Feelings Mark Conference End
Moyiga Nduru*
BANGKOK, July 16 (IPS) - The largest AIDS conference to date
ended in the Thai capital with campaigners calling for more
funding
to fight the disease, which is ravaging the world, and participants
having mixed feelings about whether significant achievements
were
made in what they termed as a giant talk fest.
In a display of African-Asian solidarity, appeals were made by
Nelson Mandela - the former president of South Africa - and
Sonia
Gandhi, leader of ruling Congress Party in India.
Mandela called upon donors, at the end of the 15th
International AIDS Conference, to increase their funding to fight
HIV/AIDS.
''This applies not only to governments, but also to the private
sector and private foundations. It also applies to every global
citizen
- no amount of money is too small to make a difference,'' he
said at
the closing cermony of the conference which attracted over
20,000 delegates.
In India, where about five million people are living with HIV,
Gandhi
said AIDS control already accounts for about 10 percent of the
country's national health budget.
''We seek the sustained understanding and support of the
international community. Multilateral and bilateral financing
agencies have been generous and so have some private
philanthropic foundations,'' said Gandhi.
The two spoke after the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
announced a 50 million U.S. dollars contribution on Thursday for
the
Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, bringing its
total contribution to 150 million dollars.
''However, it's going to take much more than the resources of
the
Gates Foundation to achieve the scale required to fund the fight
against AIDS,'' said Mandela.
According to the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS
or
UNAIDS, 38 million people around the world are now living with
HIV.
Five million news cases, says UNAIDS, were diagnosed.
The latest UNAIDS report says efforts need to be focussed in
Asia,
which it warns needs to act now to prevent ''a full blown Aids
catastrophe''. Around 1.1 million people were diagnosed with
HIV in
Asia last year alone - more than any previous year.
But the U.N. agency warns sub-Saharan Africa and Eastern
Europe continue to be badly hit by HIV epidemics.
In a statement, made available to IPS this week, the Gates
Foundation said the Global Fund faces a major funding gap.
Donors have committed a total of 3.4 billion dollars to the
Global
Funding through 2004, enough to meet the Fund's needs
through
the end of the year. However, pledges for 2005 through 2008 are
just two billion dollars, far below the 3.6 billion that the Fund
projects
it will need in 2005 alone.
But Mandela said he would not rest in the fight against HIV/
AIDS.
''As you well know, I have announced my retirement from public
life
(at the end of May), which means that I should not be here
today,'' he
told the conference.
''However the fight against AIDS is one of the greatest
challenges
the world faces at the start of the 21st century. I cannot rest until I
am
certain that the global response is sufficient to turn the tide of the
epidemic,'' said the elder statesman.
The Durban Conference in 2000 had provided the reality-jerk
for
much of the world about just how bad the HIV epidemic was -
located right in the reality of 20 million impending deaths. The
immorality of treatments access across the world was made
unavoidably stark - and many in the comfortable West were
shaken
to begin to address HIV/AIDS.
But it was the previous conference in Barcelona in 2002 that
really
galvanised the world into action.
So was the 2004 Bangkok Conference, a time of accountability
for
progress?
Graca Machel, patron of the leadership programme who
presented the Bangkok Statement of Leadership Commitment,
admitted to the failure of leadership in the fight against AIDS.
''Bangkok should be the end of promises made, promises
broken.
The lives we lost can't be brought again, but the lives still with us
can be (cared for)'', she said.
Participants to the conference also had mixed feelings whether
this year's meeting was able to reach a breakthrough apart from
previous ones.
Heloo Bernice, a health worker from Ghana said she gained
substantial information during the conference sessions and
workshops - something she said she would be able to use
when
she goes back to her country.
''I'm going to use the information to improve what I've been
doing
already in care and support,'' she told IPS.
Paul Cawthorne, the Thailand coordinator of Medecins Sans
Frontieres on the other hand, noted that not much difference has
been shown during the six-day conference except for the
presence
of the Global Village where the community was given an
opportunity
to interact outside of the formal setting.
Cawthorne hopes that the next AIDS conference, which will be
held
in Toronto in 2006, will make the breakthroughs the meeting
failed
to address.
''I hope that the Toronto meeting will go beyond the arguments
that
we've heard here. Arguments for example whether fixed
antiretroviral
drugs or generic ones would work or not,'' he told IPS. ''It is clear
they do work and the developing world needs those fixed drug
combinations at affordable prices and they need them now.''
What has made activists angry with the Bangkok Conference is
the
fact that life enhancing antiretroviral drugs, for people living with
HIV,
continue to be produced in the rich industrialised world but not
made accessible where they needed most - namely poor
communities in the developing world.
But Mechai Viravaidya, the community co-chair of the Bangkok
Conference, told IPS that lessons from Bangkok would be learnt
in
Toronto in 2006.
One positive feature of the Bangkok Conference, said Mechai,
was
the Global Village.
''I think every AIDS conference from now on has to take the Thai
experience,'' he pointed out. ''The Global Village brings people
who
are registered, scientists for example, to meet local people and
to
see that there are many way to express knowledge and opinion,
rather than having lectures.''
(*Cher Jimenez and Agnes Aristiarini contributed to this report)
(END/2004)
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