Money, stigmas, scientific advances hinder Aids fight
SCIENTIFIC advances, more funding and the elimination of social barriers that prevent those infected by the HIV virus from seeking treatment were the key issues raised at the 2016 World Aids Conference in Durban’s Inkosi Albert Luthuli Convention Centre this week.
Delegates at the closing session yesterday, were told that these would be known as the Durban Declaration.
Olive Shisana, co-chairwoman, said the biggest problem was the price of medicines.
She said the conference had revealed that more and better strategies were required to address the spread of the disease in vulnerable sectors, such as adolescents, the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender sector, sex workers and prisoners.
Shisana made it clear that in various parts of the world these groups were being subjected to human rights abuses and that a “social justice movement”, similar to that which developed during apartheid, was needed to fight them.
Governments were also not excluded from the fight or dealing with social factors.
“We must hold our governments accountable, especially African governments. We must reduce our dependence on donor resources.”
About 15 180 delegates attended the various sessions, while more than 18 000 visited the various displays and the Global Village where people could interact and network.
Outgoing president of the International Aids Society and co-chairman, Chris Beyrer, said most delegates came from South Africa, the US, Zimbabwe, Kenya and the UK.
National Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi said it was clear the world needed to come up with a better way of getting sustainable financing.
Michel Sidibé, the executive director of the Joint UN Programme on HIV and Aids (UNAids) warned on Monday, that he was concerned that the disease would rebound without continued funding.
He said 13 out of 14 major donor countries had cut their funding and he was worried that the world had become complacent in the fight against the disease.
No one could be left behind in the fight and Motsoaledi warned that to do so would render efforts to eliminate the disease useless.
It echoed the call made by England’s Prince Harry and British pop star Elton John to include the youth in the fight.
John and Prince Harry on Thursday signed a wall urging people to get tested.
Actress Charlize Theron told those at the opening ceremony that stigmas and discrimination were helping spread the disease.
Organisers were expected to issue the Durban Declaration, which among other issues, would call for increased efforts to find a vaccine and a cure, for increased access to antiretroviral treatment and and for efforts deal with the social issues of ensuring that health workers were better prepared and gender inequality was addressed.
The declaration would further call for a focus on vulnerable population sectors as well as call on those involved in the fight against the disease to challenge discriminatory laws and practices that targeted those living with HIV.
The next world conference is to be held in the Dutch capital, Amsterdam. – ANA
THIS week’s Aids conference was the second one of the International Aids Society held in Durban. The first was in 2000.
This one spanned 500 sessions, the presentation of 2500 research studies, the attendance of more than 18000 delegates, and a continually revolving celebrity sideshow with the likes of Bill Gates, Charlize Theron and Elton John, as well as thousands of media, security and support staff. Given that it runs over a week, it’s a happening that probably drew more people than does Kings Park Stadium during a bad season for the Sharks.
In shape, it’s part august scientific gathering, part jamboree. It’s also a shining example of the power of social activism.
Durban 2000 opened under the cloud of President Thabo Mbeki’s denialism over HIV/Aids. He was the keynote speaker and – as with apartheid era President PW Botha’s speech a dozen or so years earlier, also in Durban – the bated-breath hope was that Mbeki would cross a personal Rubicon, recant his pseudo-scientific claptrap and move swiftly to address a national crisis.
Alas, Mbeki’s Rubicon, like PW’s, remained resolutely unforded and the rest, as say, is history. Because of a strange combination of timidity and arrogance, both men will always be remembered as much for what they did not do, as for what they did do.
If the mood in 2000 was that of disappointment, it was also one of defiance. Out of Mbeki’s intransigence came a mobilisation of ordinary people around the provision of antiretroviral treatment that transformed, entirely peacefully, SA politics.
Driving this was the Treatment Action Campaign, which embarked upon the kind of rolling mass action, sans stones and burning tyres, that brought the apartheid government to its knees. Using every tool in the democracy 101 toolkit, the TAC took on and won, both against the pharmaceutical giants and the ANC government.
So Durban 2016 has been a different animal from its predecessor 16 years ago. The mood was triumphant, celebratory. Not only have enormous advances been made in HIV medicine, but also the political foe has been vanquished and turned into an ally.
Although President Jacob Zuma – the man who infamously prescribed a post-coital shower as an antidote to HIV infection – was nowhere to be seen, everyone else who most mattered in terms of influencing perceptions was. Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa led the charge along with Minister in the Presidency Jeff Radebe, with a gruelling schedule of speeches, panel appearances, briefings and walkabouts.
Heavily involved was Health Minister Dr Aaron Motsoaledi, a man so highly regarded in international funder circles, that no one even jested about the garlic, beetroot and a lethal industrial solvent peddled as cures by his now mercifully deceased Mbeki-era predecessor. Also in attendance were cabinet heavyweights like Science and Technology Minister Naledi Pandor.
One of the most interesting and important events was a panel organised by the influential Ford Foundation, entitled Navigating Power. Intended as “a candid conversation between funding partners and activists”, it delivered more than a griping session.
At the heart of it was the changing nature of funding and the changing nature of the organisations that they fund.
In SA, in the fertile wake of the TAC tsunami, a host of civil society organisations sprang up. These tended to be more focused, tackling a single aspect of a problem rather than an entire system.
Donors far prefer to fund such short-term tightly defined projects with directly measurable results, albeit that these are often socially and politically trivial.
Ironically, the TAC, once the darling of the donor community, is a victim of this change of emphasis and is struggling to survive.
On the panel, TAC chair Qondisa Ngwenya argued passionately for the need to move beyond administrative minutiae and short projects. Instead donors should set longer time lines, partnering with organisations that shared their core values and providing funding that was less prescriptive.
Patrick Gaspard, the US ambassador to SA, articulated the flipside. The aggressive agitation of civil society in SA had achieved much in the field of HIV/ Aids, as well as opening up “democratic conversation” at various levels of SA society.
But despite billions of dollars from the US government for HIV/ Aids work, SA activists continually berate the US government for not being supportive enough.
It was all “a little exasperating” since donors, too, were accountable to those that provided their funds. And, diplomatically unspoken by Gaspard, to the governments of the countries they operate in.
While African governments welcome the benefits brought by foreign donor funding, they are also extremely wary of it. Especially when it involves NGOs that exist expressly because of a competency or democratic lacuna created by the failures of the government
For that’s when the likes of Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe and ANC Secretary-General Gwede Mantashe start shouting about “regime change” plots.