Features
|
WHAT YOU CAN DO • Send an email to your MP at • Distribute postcards about the global fund to your colleagues,
friends and family so they can send them to their MP. • Get together a group of people in your branch or workplace
and visit your MP at their local surgery to raise the issue of the
global fund face to face. • Order ACTSA’s new report, Funding the War on Aids,
from |
The spectre of Aids stalks sub-saharan Africa and picks off five people every minute. One of the poorest regions on earth is losing its children, and potentially its future, while we in the west receive newly updated medicines and advances daily. Helen Taylor reports
Health apartheid
It is a terrible and cruel irony that, having defeated the evils of apartheid,
South Africa’s poorest should face a new and equally uncompromising
enemy – Aids. As the disease takes hold across sub-saharan Africa,
many who lived to see the birth of Mandela’s rainbow nation will
die before it comes of age.
There are 42 million people with HIV and Aids and half of them live in
southern Africa, the world’s poorest global region. Five Africans
die every minute from Aids and related illnesses, yet the international
community remains indifferent.
Global funds to treat the symptoms of the disease are minimal. Without
access to the costly medicines which alleviate the suffering of those
living with Aids in richer countries, Africans face a quick and painful
death. This injustice has been dubbed ‘health apartheid’ by
campaigners, who know only too well that the poorest and weakest members
of society are the first to succumb to illness.
“Poverty is an enormous problem,” explains Laura Fisher, campaigns
officer for Action for Southern Africa (ACTSA). “HIV affects your
immune system, so if you don’t have access to clean water and a balanced
diet then you’re much more likely to come into contact with infections
which may kill you.”
Most of those who are HIV positive in Africa die from minor illnesses,
many of which could be cured with simple medication.
A form of thrush is one of the big killers which, without medication,
causes the throat to swell up, making eating impossible.
Hardly anyone lives beyond a few years of being diagnosed HIV positive
in Africa and many are never diagnosed in the first place.
Despite the desperate need for affordable drugs to treat the symptoms
of HIV in Africa, major pharmaceutical companies refuse to lower their
prices – “They’re worried that if the prices drop in Africa
it will affect their more lucrative markets in the west,” says Fisher.
There was some hope that medicines might become more readily available
when governments struck a deal in advance of the World Trade Organisation
summit in Cancun this September.
The meeting agreed legal changes which make it easier for poorer countries
to import cheaper generic medicines. Most campaigners, however, gave the
deal a lukewarm reception, saying bureaucracy and small profit margins
may delay the provision of drugs to developing countries.
“The agreement provides so much scope for interpretation that the
only likely winners are the army of lawyers the EU and US will employ
to block any attempt by developing countries to make use of the agreement,”
says Fisher.
The only other likely source of major funding for drugs is the United
Nations global fund to fight Aids, TB and malaria (the latter two diseases
often occurring in conjunction with Aids).
The fund, set up in 2001, hoped to attract large amounts of government
funding and private finance to buy medicines, build clinics and train
staff in poorer countries, but almost no money has come from industry
and very little from governments.
The UK pays just 40% of its expected contribution, for example, and countries
such as Australia are yet to pay anything.
One of the reasons for the woefully insufficient response so far, according
to Fisher, is that the sheer size of the HIV pandemic is overwhelming.
“We’ve all been very slow in responding to HIV and I think
it’s hard for people to get their head round quite how big this is,”
says Fisher. “The black death, the plague, nothing has had as big
an impact, no war has ever killed as many people.”
HIV and Aids predominately affects the young, those between 16 and 40,
who are the most economically active. And on average, across the Southern
African region, about 20% of the working population is HIV positive. This
isn’t just bad news for the economy, it’s bad news in the fight
against Aids, as teachers and doctors are among those dying in large numbers.
“In Zambia, the number of teachers dying every year is almost double
the number that qualify through teacher training schools,” confirms
Fisher. “And without strong teachers and good schools, the chance
of people being well educated and understanding the causes of Aids is
weakened.”
Similarly in the health sector, nurses and doctors are dying and there
simply aren’t the resources to train replacements, especially for
highly skilled jobs. Employers are now training two or three people for
every job with the hope that it will leave them with one person to carry
on.
Trade unions in southern Africa have been very proactive – most have some kind of Aids programme providing peer education, counselling and confidential HIV testing for members.
Some have worked with employers to provide health care, education, information
and counselling, while others have raised funds for medicines to give
to workers.
Unions are uniquely placed to have a major input because of their role
in the community, their experience of peer education and their access
to politicians and decision makers.
Even unions here, where thankfully only a small number of the workforce
is affected, can contribute greatly.
UNISON has already been working with ACTSA and other unions on a TUC-endorsed
campaign calling for the government to contribute more to the UN’s
global fund.
“There is a lot that can be done by unions here to share expertise,” says Fisher. “They can link up with sister unions in other countries – especially in the public sector, which has been so badly affected – to offer advice and support.”
Contact the article's
author
|
|
TAKING THE MESSAGE TO THE SHOP FLOOR The union was engaged in a massive training programme over the spring, holding lunch-time meetings at 126 factories. And a total of 32,166 union members took part in the sessions, which were run by the union’s HIV and Aids project staff and trained shop stewards. Workers learnt about the causes of HIV and
Aids, the steps that can be taken to combat the disease, and where
to get help if they are affected, infected, or simply just wish
to find out their own HIV status. SACTWU distributed 70,000 information leaflets and 25,602 male and female condoms during the training, which was the biggest HIV and Aids awareness campaign undertaken by a trade union in South Africa. The sessions complemented SACTWU’s HIV
and Aids awareness programme for shop stewards, which has so far
trained 1,822 of the union’s leading reps. SACTWU has now secured funding for a voluntary counselling and testing programme from the American Centre for International Labor Solidarity and is providing this service free of charge to union members. And the union is also looking at the provision of home-based care to members with Aids. |
LOTS MORE FEATURESIncluding stress in the workplace, getting out of debt and the pensions crisis more... |
© Copyright 2008
