The HIV prevention in Africa is also a contest for the best use of
funds. By Big Pharma to Big Gates are all on site and distribute money
in large quantities. Successes are there, where everyone finds his
niche - and follow suit, especially those in power.
The report is highly topical: At 21 percent, the global rate of new
HIV infections declined since 1997, UNAIDS reported in the run up to
this year's World AIDS Day on 1 December. Even in Africa south of
Sahara, where 68 percent of all HIV-infected people live and 70
percent of all new infections are occurring, the infection rates in
1997 declined by 26 percent. That this important first hurdle in the
global fight against HIV could be made, are owed a number of factors.
Mentioned first are the most significant funds flowing for several
years, especially in the fight against AIDS in Africa. Should not be
underestimated but also the importance of national governments.
Fight against HIV: Drugs are not everything
Well can the study in Tanzania. The country has, purely numerical, the
fourth highest number of HIV infections worldwide. Because it is a
great country, which reflects not so much reflected in the average
prevalence that is specified for the total population of three to four
percent and for the adults, with around six per cent. There are other
small countries in Africa is far higher. The really acute problem in
Tanzania are very like those in northern regions around Lake Victoria
around or even some poor provinces near the capital Dar-es-Salaam,
where the rates are partially double-digit rate.
Tanzania, the HIV epidemic tried to sit out a long time: only in 2007,
a quarter of a century after the discovery of the virus, the
government declared a national anti-HIV strategy. Previously,
anti-retroviral drugs were often hard to get. And often pay for
themselves for HIV testing had affected at least partly self. Since
2007, it's different: "There is only on the western Victoria over 50
care-and-treatment center," said Dr. Jonathan Stephen from the village
of Bukoba on the western shore of Lake Victoria acting, Tanzanian
non-governmental organization TADEPA, the mobile diagnostic advisory
teams and pulls through the fishing villages of the region, where
HIV-infected persons identified and prevention does work.
The Care and Treatment Center-cover the whole country. They form the
backbone of the national treatment infrastructure. There, every
HIV-infected antiretroviral combination therapies receive free of
charge. Leverage the rapid HIV tests are available free of charge
throughout the country. This is made possible by the very big fish of
the funding landscape. Organizations like the Gates Foundation and the
Global Fund to give not only money for drugs, but sometimes go even
partnerships with "Big Pharma" or "Big diagnostics industry," one, or
they negotiate directly with the involvement of local governments
budgets. The result: "Drugs are no longer the problem," said Stephen.
Empower your granny!
One problem, however got a few years, numerous smaller funding
initiatives, which had suddenly re-orient themselves. The initiative
of Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation, Secure the Future, for example in
Africa has been launched in the 90s with anti-AIDS projects. Equipped
with a basic capital of 150 million € is slipped into a kind of
identity crisis, as Bill Gates and the Global Fund suddenly tens of
billions shoveled into southern Africa. "We had to regroup," says
Phangi Manciya Mtshali, director of the Foundation. That was not
hopeless. For with money alone can not solve the HIV problem in
Africa. Like some other funding organizations to the BMSF focused in
recent years focused on social, community-based projects, whether in
the care of children who have lost to HIV their parents, or in the
organization of mobile diagnostic and advisory networks such as
How can we do this, in the region Kibaha study, a half-hour drive
northwest of the coastal city of Dar-es-Salaam. Anyone driving around
there, which is partially villages where half the children who lost
their parents due to HIV. In the village squares, there are lively and
cheerful as so often in Africa. Only when something closer inspection
it becomes clear that the middle generation is largely absent or at
least greatly thinned.
Fight against HIV means in such a constellation of two things. On the
one hand, the remaining adults are supported to provide for the
livelihood of themselves and their children, regardless of whether it
is their own or not. As part of the Secure the Future program has been
so alone in the region Kibaha built 45 major native groups with over
700 grandmothers, where crafts and agricultural skills are taught and
are used by the Foundation in other ways, for example, supports with
tractors.
Microcredit for HIV orphans
Secondly, the children must be much much earlier self as "normal."
Somehow not independent, but so that through them as their education.
Even at this point, move Kibaha in innovative ways: Built to
micro-credit programs, which organize the children and young people
themselves. It looks like this: once a week to meet shareholders,
excluding children, and pay the weekly fee of 200 Tanzanian shillings,
about 10 euro cents, a. Acquire, whether by regular post to
shareholders the right to apply for micro credit needs, the three
members of the "Directory" - will be awarded - three girls in their
teens. The loans are usually sought for school supplies and have a
flat rate of two percent. Who needs that is 10,000 shillings, gets
handed out 9800.
Is not in a session once collected the entire capital in the form of
micro credits issued again, the rest comes in a pot with three locks.
Open only when all three "bank directors" their respective lock, the
money is accessible. The goal is clear: It will create a capital pool
that the access of adults is withdrawn completely. The money will
allow the children to help each other to complete a fairly smooth
school career. The first such projects were so successful that it now
only in the region are over 100 such children Kibaha controlled
micro-credit cooperatives. Almost in passing, such structures can then
be used to make in terms of education on HIV and to prevent that
happening to this generation the same fate as their parents.
No comments:
Post a Comment