World AIDS Day

Today marks the 21st annual World AIDS Day.

21 years of calls to action

21 years where the number of people diagnosed significantly outnumbers the number of people able to access medication

21 years of fighting for attention, fighting for engagement and fighting for a voice.

21 years and we are both further ahead and further behind.

It is so easy to view HIV/AIDS as just a disease – as if a disease can be dismissed as being just something. If you were to ask North American teenagers today about HIV/AIDS some would tell you they have no idea how it’s contracted, others would express shock that it is still a terminal illness and some would tell you that it’s no big deal – you just pop a couple of pills like Flintstone vitamins and get on with your day.

It’s true, the mortality rates in the Western World have significantly increased since AIDS first made its appearance. And the innovation and discovery around anti-retroviral medication has allowed many people to live fuller and more productive lives than those who came before them did.

But the world does not begin and end with the Western World; a shocker to be sure.

Southeast Asia, China and yes, Africa – they are on fire with HIV/AIDS. The disease continues to spread there at such a rate there is little doubt this is a pandemic – not some wimpy H1N1, can barely get out of the starting gate pandemic. But a full fledged, generations are dying out pandemic.

The theme to this year’s World AIDS Day is Universal Access and Human Rights. And it’s time we realize that Universal Access is a human right and that the denial of other human rights is directly related to the rise of HIV/AIDS infection.

HIV/AIDS cannot truly be combated until all 33.4 million people (roughly the same population of Canada) have access to the anti-retroviral medication. Those who oppose public health care in the United States engaged in scare mongering with threats of death panels but the real death panels, the ones that should strike fear in to all of us, are the governments and pharmaceutical companies that put up road blocks or install trip wire along the path to Universal Access.

But what is really standing in the way of meaningful, long lasting change is the lack of action on the gross human rights violations around the world. The continuing spread of HIV/AIDS in the developing world has its roots in gender inequality. In many parts of the world women remain distinctly lower down the scale than men. They have little say over their marriages, their sexual health – even the ability to have safe sex or say no to sex. In some cultures male promiscuity is celebrated and encouraged – regardless of the impact it has on their partners.

The cultures of rape in play in the DRC and the Sudan and the rape as retribution in Zimbabwe have all had a devastating result on the spread of HIV/AIDS. We allow the situation in Darfur to continue unabated, the situation in the Eastern DRC is worse now than it was in any of the previous 12 years of the conflict and yet there is no real change coming.

On Facebook, Starbucks a contributing member to Product (Red) announced that today it will be donating 5 cents from every drink sold in Canada and the U.S. to the Global Fund. It is a wonderful gesture by a company that does not have to do it. Could they do more? Sure. But their effort is greater than a number of large multinationals are making. And yet if you read the comments on the Facebook page you will see some shocking remarks from people saying that Starbucks should be giving the money to veterans or to local HIV/AIDS charities and if Africa can’t sort itself out, they certainly aren’t going to buy a latte to help.

Somehow we’ve lost Doctor King’s lesson that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”.

We are all connected and to think otherwise is myopic. We have a responsibility to help Africa find its way, to help ensure that women can say no, can ask for a condom, that men don’t take it as an affront to their masculinity to wear one. We have a responsibility to ensure that there is adequate nutrition and clean drinking water for all – after all, what good is access to ARVs if you have no food to absorb the medication? We have a responsibility to help those countries in conflict find their way to peace.

Universal Access and Human Rights.

Here’s hoping that it doesn’t take another 21 years to achieve either of those