Blog 2 is written by Tom Colborne, TackleAfrica’s Head of Fundraising and Development. Tom questions why HIV isn’t at the very top of every donor, politician, philanthropist and journalist’s agenda.
HIV – the biggest humanitarian disaster there is?
As well as my time with TackleAfrica, I’ve been working in the international charity sector for almost 10 years now, and have helped fundraise for many of the largest humanitarian organisations around. I’ve worked on appeals for the Asian Tsunami, the Haiti Earthquake, Make Poverty History and loads of the other high profile international issues that come up. As a fundraiser one of the biggest challenges is that often the stuff that makes the news isn’t always the most critical or largest scale issue. 
Take the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo for example. This has been going on for 5 years and has cost an estimated 3 million lives. Yet how many column inches are dedicated to this compared to say the recent Haiti earthquake – a terrible tragedy indeed, but when you compare the scale (an estimated 230,000 people lost their lives in Haiti) it just doesn’t add up.
Then look at HIV. 25 million people killed in 20 years. 33 million people infected worldwide. An overall adult prevalence of 5% in an entire sub-continent. 1.8 million people killed each year. 1.9 million new infections per year. 12 million AIDS orphans in Sub-saharan Africa alone. What percentage of the British public could even tell you what HIV stands for?
When determining whether something constitutes a ‘disaster’, there are a list of key criteria that aid agencies look at. An overwhelming of local resources. A cry for help from the local government. A sustained daily death rate. By any criteria, HIV eclipses pretty much anything else since World War II.
Yet it gets virtually zero western media coverage, and there is a current funding shortfall of billions of dollars. HIV is like a disaster movie happening right before our eyes, yet people don’t know, don’t care or don’t care to know. How many lives have been lost or negatively affected even to climate change, the war on terror or the global recession compared to HIV? Infinitesimally less I’d guess.
But earthquakes make for good television, tsunamis on Boxing Day in places we’ve just been on holiday appeal to our guilty Christmas hangovers and the behaviour of American bankers might affect our ability to get a mortgage. Who cares about an invisible virus spread by ‘immoral’ behaviour which affects poor people on the other side of the world and takes years to kill them? Especially if it’s just another disaster in Africa, a continent that – it seems – is often incredibly difficult for the Western world to relate to?
Maybe we should think about this:
India is now the country with the most people living with HIV
HIV infection rates in some communities within Ukraine have now reached 38%
HIV has been detected in almost every country in the world.
Unless we act soon, HIV may truly be the only real issue on the global agenda. And unlike earthquakes or tsunamis, HIV is entirely preventable. All we need to do is care about it enough to make it a priority. As one of our local partners – who has himself been living with HIV for over 10 years – once said to me:
“Everyone is looking for the golden bullet. But we already have the cure. And the cure is talking”
Tom Colborne, TackleAfrica 28/10/2010
Look out for future TackleAfrica blogs from our staff, volunteers, partners and beneficiaries
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