Time to Deliver

At the opening ceremonies of the XIV International AIDS Conference tonight, Melinda Gates brought up a brilliant point: by focusing on sex workers, educating them and teaching them about prevention, we are saving husbands, wives and entire families. If one sex worker convinces her client to use a condom, that is one less wife back at home with her children that could potentially be infected. She talked about how public leaders would tour with them throughout countries, visiting people affected by AIDS but once they approached sex workers, these leaders would take leave. The stigma was too much for their image. But how can that be, sex workers are human after all, like any other vulnerable group.

That's because sex workers, regardless of the billions of dollars they contribute to nations' economies, are invisible, worthless non-citizens.

Melinda Gates also talked about how many political leaders believe that distributing condoms INCREASES the risk of AIDS by promoting promiscuous sexual activity. She said that by reducing condom supplies we are promoting not less sex, but UNSAFE sex. I concur.

But I'm furious... granted she can't bash her president, but by living in Bangladesh for a few months and working on an HIV/AIDS Prevention project, I witnessed first hand the effects of that opinion, belonging to no other but the leader of the free world.

(Speaking of leaders, where was ours?)

During the Clinton administration, condoms supplies from USAID to various NGOs throughout the world was free-flowing and plenty. I learned at an executive meeting that since the inception of Bush's reign, condom supplies have been dramatically reduced, including female condoms which are too expensive for vulnerable populations to purchase but are so crucial as they allow women to be empowered.

How is it that as a human race, we have the ability to develop explosives in gel and liquid form, we have tiny cameras that fit on the head of a pin, we have a monorail that flies over the 401 at Pearson Airport and we have an obsession with Hollywood that should make us hang our heads in shame.

Where are our priorities? How can it be that this year is the 25th anniversary of the discovery of AIDS and yet the number of people dying from it everyday continues to climb exponentially? Why are ARVs too expensive and inaccessible to people in rural areas? We can chat on MSN with people across the globe. Ten years ago we were using ICQ. What happened in those ten years. Why don't people have more access to affordable drugs and health care?

The world is a mess, you would think by now we would have the sensibility to not make the mistakes we made in the past and have the expertise to make use of our technologies to improve, not worsen. I just figured that's logical.. but where's the improvement? We need to reorganise our priorities.

*****

PS. go see 'An Inconvenient Truth'... yet another pending catastrophe that we will leave as a legacy to the next generations.