[Ip-health] New book on Aids

[Michelle Childs]

I have been asked to post the details of a newish book( published in July)

Body Count:  How They Turned AIDS Into a Catastrophe by Peter Gill.

Even if you know about these issues its a short readable version of events.

Here's the publishers blurb and a link to its site
URL:
http://www.jonathanball.co.za/modules.php?op=3Dmodload&name=3DNews&file=3Da=
rticle&sid=3D101&newlang=3Deng

Michelle

June 5 2006 was the 25th anniversary of the first medical report of Aids.
25 years on, Aids is a global catastrophe, with 25 million dead and
another 40 million infected. The UN held a crisis session in May 2006. But
the disaster could have been prevented. What went wrong?

In Body Count Aids campaigner and journalist Peter Gill calls those
responsible to account. Meticulously researched, the book unearths new and
shocking facts=85

How successive US presidents, including Bill Clinton (now a great Aids
champion), failed to provide leadership against the pandemic.

How George W Bush committed $15 billion to fighting Aids, but insists on a
seriously flawed Aids prevention policy

How Christian campaigners for sexual abstinence influence the US Aids
programme =96 and how moral disapproval of prostitution and needle exchange
put vulnerable people at risk.

How sex, race and the politics of liberation fatally blinkered President
Mbeki=92s response to Aids in South Africa where one in five are
HIV-positive, and how his health minister, a qualified doctor, says that
garlic is a better treatment than drugs.

How one African leader failed to respond to the death of thousands of men,
women and children, and then declared: =91the wages of sin are death=92.

How courageous Roman Catholic missionaries in South America and Africa
stood up for condoms gainst the rigid opposition of their local superiors
and the Vatican.

How western pharmaceutical companies manoeuvred to protect their patents
and profits against the interests of poor people.

How Tony Blair=92s Labour government vigorously promotes universal Aids
treatment in Africa, but ignores the fate of many HIV-positive Africans in
Britain. And how the Thatcher government did better than Labour in
combating Aids.

The book includes unique interviews with politicians, church leaders,
campaigners and HIVpositive people: Colin Powell, who as US Secretary of
State was in charge of the Bush Aids programme, is now sharply at odds
with the administration on the question of condoms; Dr Germ=E1n Vel=E1squez=
, a
World Health Organization official, who was assaulted and warned to=91stop
messing with the pharmaceutical industry=92; Zackie Achmat, HIV-positive
South African activist, who refused to take his treatment until the
government made antiretrovirals available to everyone; Father Valeriano
Paitoni, an Italian missionary in Sao Paulo, who says that if Christ was
on earth today, He would be saying =91Use the condom.=92

Peter Gill, has recently led a major campaign against Aids in India for
the BBC World Service Trust. He has been a foreign correspondent for the
Daily Telegraph in south Asia and the Middle East, and has travelled
widely in the developing world as a TV reporter for Thames Television,
Channel 4 and the BBC.


--
Michelle Childs -Head of European Affairs
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