[Pharm-policy] Phila. Inquirer Editorial: Protests, AIDS pledges disappointing

[Paul Davis]

This editorial ran in today's inquirer. It is not an op ed.

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Protests, AIDS pledges disappointing.


A good-faith effort to help eradicate AIDS in Africa and around the world?
Or just good public relations?

That's a good question as the G-8 countries - the world's seven biggest
industrial economies, plus Russia - end their protest-pocked conference in
Genoa, Italy.

The conference ended with members pledging $1.3 billion toward the global
AIDS fund sought by the United Nations and its secretary-general, Kofi
Annan. 

At first blush, this seems to be serious money, a worthy contribution toward
an assault on AIDS through treatment and prevention. The effort will
especially target beleaguered African nations, host to a majority of the
world's AIDS and HIV cases.

But scrutinized just slightly, the figure doesn't seem impressive at all.
Even a third-grade arithmetic student could see that.

Together, the U.S. and other G-8 nations have a combined gross domestic
product of $30 trillion and account for two-thirds of the world's economic
output. So $1.3 billion is a comparative pittance - a handful of change
thrown at an epidemic that has become the modern-day equivalent of the
bubonic plague. (The current proposed U.S. contribution - $300 million - is
almost too pathetic to deserve mention.)

And the $1.3 billion - not a new lump of money but an accounting of money
already pledged by G-8 nations - falls far short of the $7 billion to $10
billion Mr. Annan says the global AIDS fund demands each year to be
effective. If the world's richest nations are pledging only a small fraction
of that goal, from where is the rest supposed to come?

But $1.3 billion still makes for a good sound bite. It's enough to be spun
into good PR by rich nations desperately in need of a softer image.

The money - as well as G-8 pledges to attack poverty, especially in Africa -
helped counter mass demonstrations by tens of thousands of protesters raging
against globalization and other issues less clear.

In fact, the demonstrators could have paid a lot more attention to PR
themselves. While the majority was peaceful, the protest was marred by a
handful of black-hooded anarchist groups who gutted banks, torched cars and
sledge-hammered ATM machines, causing Genoa damages estimated at $45
million.

It is tragic that one demonstrator was shot dead by police. It is sad that,
with its announcement about the pledges to the AIDS fund, the G-8 conference
was able to seize the PR high ground.

Just remember, the HIV-AIDS virus isn't fooled by PR.


--

Paul Davis
pdavis@critpath.org
Health GAP Coalition
ACT UP Philadelphia

+1.215.474.6886 direct tel.
+1.215.474.4793 fax
+1.215.731.1844 ACT UP