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World AIDS Day photo-opportunities: AIDS activists get eyeball to eyeball with senior ministers

29 November 2005
Politicians will get the distinct feeling they are being watched this World AIDS Day, when a double-decker bus covered with thousands of eyes turns up on their doorsteps.

The old Routemaster bus – covered inside and out in close-up photos of AIDS campaigners’ eyes – will ‘watch’ Ministers, MPs and officials, to ensure they keep their promise of AIDS treatment for all who need it by 2010.

“We are watching the government to ensure they stand by their promise of AIDS treatment for all by 2010. This ambitious promise was made by G8 leaders and the UN this year. If kept, millions of lives will be saved. Meeting the target will not be easy - if every man, woman and child who needs treatment is to get it by 2010 will have to match their words with changes to policy and a scale up infunding” said Kirsty McNeill, Stop AIDS Campaign manager.

Over 40 million people are living with HIV and AIDS worldwide with only one in ten receiving life-saving treatment. Over three million AIDS deaths have been recorded this year alone, half a million of which were children and a staggering five million people have been newly infected.

Fionnuala Murphy of the Student Stop AIDS Campaign said, “We’ve been watching world leaders closely since the G8 Summit. We know that they’ve done a lot on AIDS treatment this year, but more can and should be done. Our generation is carrying the burden of the global AIDS pandemic and we want it to stop now. “

AIDS treatment for all is desperately needed in order to turn the pandemic around. The Stop AIDS Campaign’s message to policy-makers is that the 2010 AIDS treatment target cannot be met without the following changes in policy:

Generating Increased Resources
Making Drugs Affordable and Accessible
Strengthening Health Systems

Felicity Daly of ActionAid said, “the UK must work with other donor governments to avert the funding crisis beleaguering international funding mechanisms such as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS,TB and Malaria. If the Fund is unable to play a crucial role in financing a massive expansion in treatment access through launching a new funding round in 2006 it is hard to see how the Gleneagles commitment can become a reality. “

For the vast majority of those infected, treatment is so expensive that it remains out of reach. Life –saving anti-retroviral drugs cost a minimum of 140 dollars per person per year - but with many millions of people affected living on less than a dollar a day affording treatment is impossible. For children the situation is even more desperate- padeatric drugs are up to eight times more expensive than adult drugs.

Kirsty McNeill, Stop AIDS campaigns manager said “ the cost of drugs for both adults and children is prohibitive and one of the major barriers to preventing millions from dying prematurely. HIV shouldn’t be an instant death sentence. Treatment needs to made affordable so that proper healthcare which is readily provided to those living in rich countries such as the UK is extended to those vast majority of poor people who are living with the virus around the world.”

Dr Rachel Baggaley of Christian Aid said, “there is a desperate need for investment in health infrastructure in poor countries. It is a disgrace that in the face of the ever-increasing HIV epidemic, IMF policies restrict investment in these areas. Comprehensive long-term investment in health care is crucial if we are to reach the 2010 target.”

ENDS

For more information contact:
Ilana Rapaport – 07835 108864
Charlotte Godber – 020 7641 7633

Notes:

The Stop AIDS Campaign (www.stopaidscampaign.org.uk) represents more than 80 UK-based organisations fighting HIV and AIDS in developing countries - including CARE International - and is the campaigning arm of the UK Consortium on AIDS & International Development. We are part of the Make Poverty History mobilisation, and work alongside other networks that focus on debt, aid and trade justice.
Friends of TAC (FOTAC) is a UK-based group supporting the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), a grass-roots organisation in South Africa with tens of thousands of members, which campaigns for greater access to HIV treatment for all, and for the empowerment of people affected by HIV and AIDS.