The match was organised by HIVSport, one of TackleAfrica’s UK partners, to raise awareness of the HIV epidemic in the lead up to World AIDS day, and saw the touring United Nations Workers Football Team take on the  UK Parliamentary XI in the final match of a 4 game UK tour.   Despite deeply treacherous and snowy conditions, 22 brave souls took to the field and produced a remarkably high-quality 80 minutes of football, with the UN eventually triumphing by 4 goals to 1.

HIVSport, who also helped organise the ‘Keep a Clean Sheet’ campaign in the run up to the 2010 World Cup, formally donated an England shirt signed by World Cup squad members to TackleAfrica’s Tom Colborne.  The shirt has been auctioned to Durex and the money raised will go towards the development of the SportCares Leadership programme.

Following the event, both teams were transported back to Parliament on a bus organised by the Stop AIDS campaign, daubed with important messages to raise awareness of the global HIV pandemic.  

The day highlighted important issues such as the shortfall of the Millenium Goals in providing universal access to treatment by 2010.   Although access to ARVs has grown hugely in Africa over the last 5 years – largely due to the availability of cheap unpatented drugs manufactured in India, 63% of Africans in need of treatment in 2009 could not access medication.  This imbalance leads to millions of preventable deaths from AIDS-related illnesses every year.   Millions more babies will be born HIV positive due to the lack of available medication in Africa which has been proven to all but eliminate mother to child transmission in more developed regions.

To find out more about the latest UNAIDS update on the HIV pandemic, and how you can help, click here

One game saves lives

The UNAIDS epidemic update for 2009 has just been published, and the results are fascinating.  Download the full report here or read the UNAIDS Sub-Saharan Africa Factsheet.

Infection rates in 33 countries worldwide have fallen by 25% or more.   22 of these countries are in Sub-Saharan Africa.  This shows conclusively that interventions aimed at prevention, resulting in positive behaviour change, work.  

In 7 countries in Eastern Europe and Asia, new infection rates have risen by more than 25%.  This shows the effect of stigma, discrimination, ignorance, lack of access to services and bad laws.

In many cases, as UNAIDS observe, the effects either way are profound.

What we are seeing in Africa now is an epidemic that is being tamed through the behaviour of young people.   Suddenly it is Asia and Europe that need to learn lessons – both positive and negative – from Africa.   There are signs that Africans, despite the huge political, economic, educational and humanitarian challenges inherent to many of their everyday lives, are beginning to win the war against perhaps the single greatest threat to African humanity.

The overall tone of the report is positive.  There is talk of turning a corner: new infections are down, medication has decreased the number of AIDS-related deaths,  the adult HIV prevalence in Sub-Saharan Africa is down, results from South Africa show that mother to child transmission can be all-but-eliminated under controlled medical conditions.   But let’s put this into context.

There are as many people living with HIV in the 10 countries of Southern Africa as in Europe and Asia combined

1.3m Africans died of AIDS-related illnesses in 2009.   That’s about one every 25 seconds for a year.

56% of Africans who need HIV medication still have no access to treatment

Each African man has – on average – access to 20 condoms per year

We are still talking about an epidemic that is off the scale of any natural disaster, terrorist threat, famine or even war since 1945.  We are still talking about 1 in 20 African adults being infected with a contagious and fatal virus, and we are still talking about a continent starved of resources and reliant on discarded medicines from the Western world.

There are some other worrying things that strike me as I read this report.

Are HIV rates declining in Africa partly, largely or simply because there are less people less to infect?  Have we reached an epidemiological saturation point, a wildfire plateau where the spread of the virus is reduced largely due to large swathes of the most-at-risk members of the population being already infected?  

HIV will fight back.  It plays the long game, and is without question the most cunning virus ever faced, replicating in the very biological structures that exist to repel it, spreading through the behaviours common to every human but so often shrouded in silence, and allying with some of mankind’s biggest historical enemies  (TB, cancer, poverty, ignorance greed and fear) to widen its impact.  

The retro-virus HIV will typically become resistant to treatment within a number of years at which point the infected person must move on to a second combination of drugs; there are people in America who are now on their 20^th line of treatment.   In Africa only first line treatment is widely available – largely Western hand-me-downs of drugs that their previous owners (or more correctly their previous owners’ viruses) have outgrown.   What happens when African HIV learns to overcome this first-line treatment?  Will the world’s banks, governments and pharmaceuticals step forward in a time of economic austerity to provide the highly expensive second and third line drug regimes to the 25 million infected Africans? 

The Millenium Goals promised universal access to HIV treatment by 2010.    But due to broken promises on funding we are only a little over half the way there.  That means millions of Africans will continue to die needlessly of an infection that in the developed world is as manageable as diabetes. 

Perhaps the tide is turning, and the winning of countless individual battles is beginning to win the war.  We know that knowledge and behaviour change – allied with political will, funding and medical science – will save countless lives.  But we also know funding will be even harder to secure, that huge new challenge, particularly around treatment, are just around the corner and that the sheer numbers of people at risk will never be reflected by the amount of public coverage and political attention. 

Giving 90 minutes of your salary to TackleAfrica this World AIDS day is one small way in which you can help some of those most affected by HIV in Africa.   With your support we can reach over 25,000 young people this year, giving them the knowledge and power to keep themselves and their loved ones safe.

One Game Saves Lives

Tom Colborne, 1st December 2010

We arrived safely and with no problems from the UK (if you don’t count the broken back from 9 hours in economy class seats) and were met at the airport by Joseph from MYSA and George the driver.

The roads through Nairobi were a touch bumpier than your average rollercoaster but we made good time and were at our guest house in just over an hour. I was sad to hear that the ‘Matatu’ or shared taxis will be no longer as of June 2011. You have to look out for them as you would a sugar crazed 10 year old in a bumper car but to me they are a piece of Africa and are being discontinued because they create too much traffic in the city centre. In their place people are gathering together to buy 25+ seater vehicles which is now the minimum size although I’m not entirely sure this will solve Nairobi’s chronic traffic problem as they are double the width and triple the length of the old mini buses. 

The Kenya School of Accountancy will be our base for the next few weeks and Ben, Clive and I recovered from our flight in the dining room over coffee, cake and sausages (a traditional welcome offering or all that was left from breakfast). Clive was doing his best Clint Eastwood impression with beard and toothpick while I checked out Ben’s lovely pink watch.

The evening brought with it the obligatory Premier League feast which we enjoyed in a nearby hotel and our first contact with David from MYSA. We lost the feed of the match at one point while a monsoon downpour hit which cleared the air ready for our first day on the course.  Commiserations to Chelsea fans on being humbled by Sunderland at home and here’s to many more twists in this year’s race to the title.

As I finish this blog we have wrapped up the first day and a wonderful one it was too. Hopefully if Ben’s photography skills are better than his goalscoring (competitive goal no.1 at MYSA: Ben 17 mins o.g) we will have some great pics to share with you all so check out our Flickr galleries.

One game saves lives

Yianny 15/11/2010

Tell us a little about yourself and why you applied to be TackleAfrica’s chair of Trustees

My working life has included education, self employment and corporate life, where for 8 years I was a senior executive of a UK plc operating in 16 countries of Europe. I am currently running my own business focused on organisation change and development. The common feature of this rather unusual career – at least, I am told it is so – has been a commitment to working alongside people, helping them to make their organisations as effective as they can be in meeting goals and aspirations. 

TackleAfrica’s link between football and health education is particularly inspirational and the approach of TackleAfrica has the opportunity to achieve tangible and positive goals, changing lives for the better. I consider it a privilege to be part of this work.

What challenges do you think TA faces in the future?

There are several challenges that we face; 

(i)      To build on-going and sustainable programmes of activity in the six countries in which we currently operate, this means working ever closer with our partner NGOs and Community Based Organisations to create and develop local infrastructure. 

(ii)     To ensure that there is a small but highly effective team of people in the UK confidently able to resource the activity, build on the success of the programmes already begun and create and deliver new programmes as required

(iii)   To generate a sustainable and significant income stream that can support the developing work of TackleAfrica

What’s your ambition for the charity going forward and where would you like to see it in five/ten years?

I think that the Charity is ready for some real growth in its activity.  In my view, all those involved in TackleAfrica can rightly feel proud of the achievements that have been made and to which they have contributed. This is especially in the quality of the World Class Manuals that have been created; the dedication and personal time commitment of the UK and African Football Coaches; the enthusiasm of those involved in the Football Marathon and, not least, the passion and energy of the members of the Trustee Board. 

The legitimate pride in what has achieved so far has to be tempered by the realisation that there is much still to be done. The next steps in our development will lead to TackleAfrica reaching out to many more young people through a significantly higher number of African coaches.  These coaches will be trained, developed and supported locally and their activity will be accredited, by academic or other relevant qualifying organisations. The work that TackleAfrica does will be increasingly recognised within the countries in which we operate and the charity will be seen as a key leader in sport-related HIV education across Africa.  

Will we be operating in more countries? Will we have been able to establish ourselves as an authority to which others refer? Will we have increased feedback that shows the behavioural change effects of our programmes? I expect that the answer to these questions is a qualified ‘yes’, but I think that this will be a matter that can be picked up in the coming months and years.

One Game Saves Lives

Look out for more blogs and opinion pieces from TackleAfrica’s staff, volunteers, partners and beneficiaries

 Yianny has delivered football and HIV courses in Africa since 2007 in Mali, Botswana and Lesotho and his responsibilities include the development of TackleAfrica’s coaching curriculum, appointing regional project officers and support and delivery of coaching courses.

 In his first 12 months Yianny will visit all the TackleAfrica projects across 6/7 countries rolling out the delivery of the new curriculum and course structure.

Speaking about the Manual Fulham and Ghana Midfielder John Pantsil said “In any team I’ve played in it’s important to strike the right balance. TackleAfrica’s World Cup Manual strikes the perfect balance, a great resource both for HIV/AIDS education whilst also helping kids improve their football skills with a smile on their faces”

For more information about the manual please contact us at info@tackleafrica.org

With excitement surrounding FIFA’s glittering 2010 World Cup in South Africa reaching fever pitch, it’s easy to forget that this year’s host nation currently boasts the highest rate of HIV on the planet; an estimated 5.4 million people accounting for one fifth of all cases globally.

UK-based, TackleAfrica uses football as a vehicle to increase young people’s understanding and combat the spread of HIV and AIDS in their communities across Africa.

TackleAfrica’s 2010 projects continue during The World Cup in South Africa with projects in Knysna June 6th – June 18th and will continue across Africa throughout the year.

Former England winger, John Barnes, will be a giving expert analysis for the host broadcaster in South Africa, said “It’s really important that football fans don’t forget about South Africa after the World Cup ends. TackleAfrica does fantastic work in using the power of football to enable young people to lead the fight against the spread of HIV & AIDS for themselves – show them your support!”