Africa and AIDS: the fat cats should hang their heads in shame!

[12 August 2009 - 12h19]

George Bush Jr. and Dick Cheney, Barack Obama, Robert Mugabe, Muammar Gaddafi… This is the strange band of heads of state, or former heads, who found themselves being heaped with shame on the last day of the 5th International AIDS Society (IAS) Conference in Cape Town.

Over the 4 days of the conference, no fewer than three demonstrations were held vocalising a lively defence of the interests of those suffering from HIV/AIDS and the public in general. The crowning piece was a demonstration organised by the South African NGO AIDS Rights Alliance for South Africa (ARASA) condemning the corruption and abuses of public funds that they believe are draining the funding that should be used for research and health care.

Robert Mugabe, guest of honour in the lampoon film “les rois du bling-bling” [the bling-bling kings] broadcast on the internet, comes across as a very poor relation. In fact, he contributed only 250,000 dollars to the pot given to celebrate his 85th birthday … A pot which “could have helped fund the treatment of 10,501 TB sufferers”, ARASA declared in no uncertain fashion.

The effigy of Gaddafi tops the bill for corruption in Africa with 148 billion dollars, ie the equivalent “of a year’s HIV treatment for 704 million people”. More than 20 times what’s needed. And our rich American brothers are condemned for wasting even greater amounts. At almost 687 billion dollars, the war in Iraq has already cost “more than 140 times the money needed to fill the hole in the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria”. As for Barack Obama, the 700 billion in funding raised to “wipe out” the effects of the economic crisis are “more than 100 times the annual budget of the (American) Presidential Fund to combat AIDS”.

Source : from our special correspondents at the 5th IAS Conference, Cape Town, 19-22 July 2009

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