Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2002. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2002. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Reuters NewMedia - Saturday, November 23, 2002
Brendan Boyle
In South Africa for an MTV concert Saturday that will be part of a World Aids Day television special targeting a global audience of up to two billion people, they said musicians had a special responsibility to talk to young people about HIV/AIDS.
"Once you know about it, it's almost like being an accessory to the genocide if you just turn your back on it...go on about your day and not do anything about it," Combs told a news conference.
He told Reuters in an interview later that pop idols had a special responsibility to use their influence with young people to spread messages of awareness and tolerance.
"We have the cool factor thing. We're not seen like politicians, we're not seen to have an ulterior motive. It's just real, from the heart," he told Reuters.
Combs and Keys were the star attractions at a concert that will form part of a 90-minute MTV music television special that will be broadcast on December 1, World Aids Day.
MTV executive Bill Rodie told Reuters the program would go out directly to the pop channel's potential audience of one billion young people and would be given free to any other broadcaster, boosting the audience to a potential two billion.
He said the artists were performing free and the program would include a video-taped message from former President Nelson Mandela, who is South Africa's most powerful AIDS campaigner.
"We wanted to come to where the epidemic has hit very hard to record the concert, but the actual television show will include all sorts of messages for a global audience.
"The message is about awareness and tolerance," he said.
CHANGE GLOBAL ATTITUDE
The United Nations estimates that 2.3 million Africans died of AIDS-related illnesses last year and about 40 million others are living with the virus, for which there is no cure.
With 4.8 million people -- one in every nine people -- already infected, South Africa has more people living with AIDS and HIV, the virus that causes it, than any other country in the world.
Researchers estimate that up to seven million South Africans will have died as a result of AIDS by 2010 if the government does not intervene much more actively than it has.
Keys told Reuters her week in South Africa, including visits to AIDS clinics and homes for infected orphans, had opened her eyes to the scale of the pandemic.
"Americans don't know what is happening here. I don't think they understand how many young people are being infected daily, by the minute," she said.
Branding her countrymen "arrogant," she said there was a tendency to dismiss the plight of Africans and refuse the help they could offer.
"I care, so I am going to speak about it -- every day," she said.
Kevin Carroll, community affairs manager for jeans makers Levi Strauss & Co, said his company, MTV, and the separate foundations of Microsoft founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen had been planning the Staying Alive Concert broadcast for a year.
He said in an interview it would put a spotlight on AIDS in Africa that could change the global attitude to the issue for ever.
"Having the global reach of the concert and people seeing how the pandemic is playing out in Africa has to make a difference," he said.
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