News archives: 2004
PW meet the PM at the Launch of the UK's new Global Aids Strategy
PW was represented at the Prime Minister’s high profile launch of the UK’s new Global AIDS Strategy. The launch on 20 July 2004 was organised by the Department for International Development...
International AIDS Conference in Bangkok 2004
Positively Women had a team of representatives at the conference including two members of staff and a volunteer from the Taking Part Project...
Positively Women hail the first UK Conference of people living with HIV and AIDS a huge success
Over 400 people attended the largest ever, national conference of people living with HIV held from 4-7 September 2004...
PW meet the PM at the Launch of the UK's new Global Aids Strategy
PW was represented at the Prime Minister’s high profile launch of the UK’s new Global AIDS Strategy. The launch on 20 July 2004 was organised by the Department for International Development.
The strategy set out how the UK government will spend the £1.5 billion committed in the latest Government’s Spending Review. £150 million will be spent on helping children whose parents have died from AIDS related illnesses. The UK will also double its contribution to the Global Fund to fight AIDS, TB and Malaria in the next three years – increasing the UK donation to over £150 million.
Hilary Benn, Secretary of State for International Development, and Peter Piot from UNAIDS among others, attended the launch. The multi-cultural group, included representatives from Positively Women and ICW, the only 2 organisations chosen to represent women living with HIV. Young people living with and affected by HIV, men living with HIV and representatives from the HIV the sector also attended. The Prime Minister said, 'The strategy addresses the special needs of women, young people and orphans, the people most vulnerable in the developing world.' He went on to say that ignoring the global epidemic was not an option.
Positively Women’s team was made up of volunteers and staff from the Taking Part Project who were very well received at the breakfast meeting and then participated in the press conference. PW’s representatives were able to talk about their personal experiences, ask questions and later fielded questions from the press. It was an important opportunity to present the views of women living with HIV to the Department for International Development, government ministers and directly to the Prime Minister, as well as researchers and other people living with HIV. PW laid particular emphasis on how HIV can be tackled through controlling transmission, particularly amongst the most vulnerable groups, urging the Prime Minister to support the research into finding safer preventative methods like Microbicides, to save lives sooner.
Most significant was the recognition by the government that HIV is a global issue – it is not going away and although the international community has made some progress in tackling the pandemic, it is not nearly enough. Placing a special focus on the needs of women, young people and orphans, in the strategy, is a step forward.
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International AIDS Conference in Bangkok 2004
Positively Women had a team of representatives at the conference including two members of staff and a volunteer from the Taking Part Project. The following report was written by our Director.
Elephants and Activism - the XV International AIDS Conference in Bangkok
‘Access for All’ was the conference title, with much content on access to treatment, commitment, accountability and leadership. Some 17,000 people attended, and getting from one seminar to another was like crossing Oxford Street a week before Christmas. Except there was a group of elephants, the symbol of Thailand, performing outside the main hall. There was also a conference tailor for instant suit making, a global village for shopaholics and acres of wonderful food.
‘Leadership’ said Kofi Anan, ‘means doing things differently because you recognize that AIDS is a different kind of disease’ The Leadership programme gave us a chance to question world leaders committed to fighting AIDS. It also offered leadership skills building. We listened politely to the importance of local leadership, national leadership and community training in the fight against AIDS. In the exhibitors’ hall, activists trashed pharmacos trade stands, but in a mainly polite manner. The IAS had acknowledged activism and advocacy in the fight against AIDS but requested that force and destruction of property did not take place during the conference.
The political message was difficult to follow. The US contingent was small and had no people of power. The Thai Prime Minister who opened the conference spoke about the achievements and plans in his country. But the level of transmission among IV drug users has remained the same as in 1988. The Director of the Thai Drug Users network, the only person living with HIV to speak at the opening ceremony, was pushed to the end of the programme. His indictment of the government's failure to provide treatment for injecting drug users was not televised.
There were powerful arguments and strategies for providing resource-poor places with treatment. Strong messages throughout for working together to make access for all a reality. The successes and failures of national programmes were aired with the social and cultural factors that promote transmission. Poverty hunger, ill-health and war together with neo liberal economies, place people above profits. We heard it all.
Nothing new so far.
The conference provided a platform for new gifts and new accolades. The EU announced $52m to the Global Fund, PM Taksin Shinawatra announced a new national harm reduction programme. John Kerry if elected will remove the ban on PLWHA visiting the US. The SA health minister stopped and restarted the use of neviripine to prevent mother to child transmission. DfID announced 1.5m for combating HIV and AIDS in the developing world. Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation gave $50m to the Global Fund.
3 by 5, the WHO pledge to have 3 million accessing treatment by 2005, and the Three Ones were earnestly discussed. Increasing the flow of resources to low and middle income countries must be matched by a strong unified national response as in the 3 principles of:
- One agreed AIDS action framework
- One national AIDS coordinating authority
- One agreed country monitoring and evaluation system
Frightening Figures
3 by 5 needs an additional 100,000 health and community workers to function. 13m children are orphaned by AIDS, 95% are in sub Sarahan Africa The global fund needs $3.5m in 2005, $800m has been pledged so far.
Although the general feeling was that the conference lacked rigour and strategic overview relating to reality, the power of getting together the full range of players in the global stage of HIV was immense. No single approach or intervention is universally applicable in the HIV conundrum, but linking in to the global issues and the diversity of responses was a strengthening experience.
The Conference closing ceremony was a powerful event, with a line of people living with HIV stepping forward to say what they needed from the leaders of today. Graca Machel patron of the Leadership programme called for ‘an end to broken promises. We must make sure that when my granddaughter’s generation looks back, we can say we deserved to be called leaders, because we took our responsibility to the fullest.’ In a week that made us look long at the global context of HIV, put science on the back burner and drug users, mothers and young people in the picture, we finally got a spine tingling demand to take action and be accountable. In the face of all those ‘something must be done’ speeches, members of the UK contingent have already started to plan how we will hold our government to account and to urge them to promote funding research into vaccines and microbicides.
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Positively Women hail the first UK Conference of people living with HIV and AIDS a huge success
Over 400 people attended the largest ever, national conference of people living with HIV held from 4-7 September 2004. The conference was organised by Positively Women, the UK Coalition of People Living with HIV and AIDS, the National Long Term Survivors Group and the National AIDS Trust.
The four-day event was unique in that over 350 of the speakers and attendees were people living with HIV allowing them to debate the issues, question policy makers and set the agenda. It aimed to foster leadership among people living with HIV, improve peoples' skills in managing their healthcare, employment, education, legal and financial affairs and create an opportunity to develop support networks. The conference also held seminars and workshops to debate current issues for people living with HIV, such as patient and public involvement in the NHS, employment and prosecution for the transmission of HIV.
Positively Women was represented by beneficiaries, volunteers, staff, and Chair of its board co-chaired the Conference itself. It was an event that united HIV positive people from different walks of life and challenged them to think Am I Doing Something about changing tomorrow and the future of HIV in the UK.
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