HEALTH: Tune In to AIDS Fight, UN Tells World Media

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Peter Deselaers

UNITED NATIONS, Jan 15 2004 (IPS) - The media has a key role to play in the fight against the spread of HIV, the deadly virus that causes AIDS, said U. N. chief Kofi Annan on Thursday, urging the industry’s senior officials to do more to fulfil that role.

The media has a key role to play in the fight against the spread of HIV, the deadly virus that causes AIDS, said U. N. chief Kofi Annan on Thursday, urging the industry’s senior officials to do more to fulfil that role.

“I think this is one of the most important meetings this year will bring,” Annan told media leaders from around the world at U.N. headquarters in New York.

The fight against AIDS cannot be won “without the unparalleled power of you (the media)”, he added.

On hand were representatives from broadcast media including BBC (Britain), Globo International (Brazil), Prasar Bharati Broadcasting Cooperation (India) and China Central Television.

“AIDS is an epidemic of the information age, yet it is precisely these tools of the information age that are our strongest weapons,” UNAIDS head Peter Piot told the officials.

Lack of awareness is not only a problem of developing nations, as the results of another study show: in the United States, 40 per cent of participants mistakenly thought that the HI virus could be transmitted by sharing a drinking glass or by coughing.

AIDS killed three million people in 2003, more than in any previous year. Worldwide, 40 million people are infected, according to the latest U.N. report.

“We are not yet reversing its spread, despite knowing what works,” said Piot.

The Global Media AIDS Initiative is a partnership between UNAIDS and the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, and financed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Foundation President Drew Altman told the media leaders, “I believe you are the greatest untapped resource in the fight, especially when it comes to young people”.

Youths, he added, “do not like to talk to doctors, and in some points in their lives they may not even like to talk to their parents, if they have parents. But they do absolutely listen to you”.

The media can put HIV/AIDS on the political agenda, hold political actors accountable, and inform and educate the people, said Kingsley Obom-Egbulem from the Nigerian group Journalists against AIDS.

“When AIDS is not in the news, it does not exist for the community,” he told IPS.

‘LoveLife’ is a South African campaign to educate young people about HIV/AIDS using a combination of media, community initiatives and centres and a hotline, Altman told the meeting.

“Our evaluations are showing that significant percentages are reporting delaying sex, practicing safer sex and going and getting tested for HIV”, as a result of that multi-media approach, he added.

Besides discussing the problem, participants developed concrete proposals: Black Entertainment Television offered its AIDS-awareness “spots” free for other networks to broadcast.

Univision, a Spanish-language U.S.-based TV channel, proposed an Internet database that would contain information, research sources and free material for media companies to share.

That immediately generated offers of material from entertainment channel MTV, France’s TV5 and other stations.

Altman said the media needed to make a solid commitment to the fight. ”Campaigns need to operate at a sufficient level of intensity to have an impact,” he added. An occasional public service advertisement (PSA) is insufficient.

“Effective campaigns go beyond PSAs, importantly integrating messages and information into the most important shows, and ‘ramping up’ news coverage on HIV.”

The impact of HIV-prevention messages in a widely watched soap opera in Tanzania was immense, according to an evaluation of ‘Twende na Wakati’ (Let’s Go With the Times).

It found that 8 out of 10 viewers who responded to the survey said they had adopted an HIV-prevention measure after watching the programme.

Some networks have incorporated AIDS education into children’s programmes and entertainment shows. “Right into the scripts of the shows – that is where we have to place the life-changing messages”, said Peter Matlare, chief of the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC).

In SABC’s ‘Takalani Sesame’ – the South African ‘Sesame Street’ – for example, one character is HIV-positive. The puppet Kami (the Tswana word for hope) emerged on the show in September 2002 and soon faced discrimination in school, but overcame it and began to teach tolerance to its friends.

News coverage of HIV/AIDS, on the other hand, is scarce. In 2003, the three major U.S. television networks devoted only 39 minutes on their evening news programmes to the crisis. But they spent more than 4,000 minutes covering the war in Iraq, according to ADT Research of New York.

Media “can save as many, if not more, lives than physicians”, said Piot, whose agency projects some 45 million new infections worldwide by 2010 if prevention efforts do not increase dramatically.

But if public education and effective prevention programmes are strengthened, 30 million of those lives could be saved, the organisation estimates.

Besides signing a statement committing themselves to increase their efforts, some media corporations also announced specific plans Thursday.

Russian company Gazprom said it will address HIV/AIDS in a comprehensive campaign, in cooperation with the non-governmental organisation (NGO) Transatlantic Partners Against AIDS.

Viacom, which owns the CBS network in the United States, will increase its commitment from 130 million to 200 million dollars across all its stations, kicking off with an awareness spot during CBS’ coverage of this year’s Super Bowl, the American football championship.