Common Folk Using Common Sense

Yep, or so say some that know:

As World AIDS Day is marked on Monday, some experts are growing more outspoken in complaining that AIDS is eating up funding at the expense of more pressing health needs.

They argue that the world has entered a post-AIDS era in which the disease’s spread has largely been curbed in much of the world, Africa excepted.

“AIDS is a terrible humanitarian tragedy, but it’s just one of many terrible humanitarian tragedies,” said Jeremy Shiffman, who studies health spending at Syracuse University.

This has been my only complaint for years. AIDS is terrible, and the death resulting from AIDS can be inhumanly slow and brutal. But AIDS is only one of many terrible illnesses, and to have it raised to Medical Malady #1 is to forget the others, as well as those that die from the others.

Roger England of Health Systems Workshop, a think tank based in the Caribbean island of Grenada, goes further. He argues that UNAIDS, the U.N. agency leading the fight against the disease, has outlived its purpose and should be disbanded.

“The global HIV industry is too big and out of control. We have created a monster with too many vested interests and reputations at stake, … too many relatively well paid HIV staff in affected countries, and too many rock stars with AIDS support as a fashion accessory,” he wrote in the British Medical Journal in May.

And here’s where some of my frustration comes in. Too many rock stars, celebrities, media elite, and politicians with AIDS support as a fashion accessory. Claiming to support AIDS research is trendy and chic, whereas supporting malaria research is just too damn boring. After all, getting AIDS is terrible and demands eternal candlelight vigils, whereas dying from measles is, well, just too bad.

England argues that closing UNAIDS [the U.N. agency leading the fight against the disease] would free up its $200 million annual budget for other health problems such as pneumonia, which kills more children every year than AIDS, malaria and measles combined.

Experts working on other health problems struggle to attract money and attention when competing with AIDS.

“Diarrhea kills five times as many kids as AIDS,” said John Oldfield, executive vice president of Water Advocates, a Washington, D.C.-based organization that promotes clean water and sanitation.

“Everybody talks about AIDS at cocktail parties,” Oldfield said. “But nobody wants to hear about diarrhea,” he said.

In your wildest imagination do you think you will ever see Mariah Carey, George Michael, Elton John, or Bono giving free concerts to raise money for diarrhea prevention, even though it kills five innocent children for every one that dies of AIDS? Why is that?

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