Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2003. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
International Federation of Red Cross and Red Cresent Societies - 14 July 2003
Addressing the United Nation's Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), Massimo Barra, president of the European Regional Network on AIDS and a member of the Global Fund board, called for a more concerted effort to tackle the pandemic.
"No organization can defeat AIDS on its own," he said.
He pointed out that the Red Cross and Red Crescent had adopted a new long-term approach to the crisis in Southern Africa, which combines food security with integrated community care involving HIV/AIDS prevention, care and treatment, the provision of safe water and sanitation, health services and the promotion of economic self-reliance.
"We now need other agencies, donors and governments to fund and drive a 'coalition of the willing' ... to revert this major disaster. The Red Cross is ready to participate," Barra said.
It was only now, he said, that we were beginning to understand how the different factors interplay to produce this new kind of complex emergency, which the world has never before experienced. "If something is bad, HIV finds it and joins forces to make things worse," Barra said.
He said that if the Millennium Development Goals were to be more than just the aspiration of a better world, and the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger a viable objective, then humanitarian interventions had to factor in the HIV/AIDS pandemic.
"The thinking and analysis of humanitarian response must change. Food aid may have saved more than 14 million lives but it only postponed a disaster. It did nothing to address the causes, or the wider, threatening context," Barra explained.
"What is happening is unprecedented, and doing business as usual will not halt it. The humanitarian world is deep in uncharted territory, and the map from the past will not guide us through the future. Clearly, policy and practice - that of donors and governments as well - have begun to lag behind the emerging challenges."
Barra praised the creation two years ago of the Global Fund to fight AIDS, TB and malaria, which was aimed at contributing to an integrated, more comprehensive response to these deadly but largely preventable diseases.
"Today the fund is suffering because the governments that sit on its Board and fund it are not living up to their commitments. They are falling short of the principles of civil society participation that made it such an innovative instrument and falling even shorter in terms of funding commitments," he complained.
"What is it that is preventing us from allocating adequate resources to a jointly planned and implemented multi-sector response that enables and reinforces the local response? For the sake of the millions of people now dead from this disaster, so that their death may have some sort of meaning, and for the sake of those whose lives are still salvageable, I urge you to address this question," Barra concluded.
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