Global Crisis

Last year with great fanfare, the world famous ‘Doomsday Clock’ was set back five minutes from its approach to midnight as a mark of how much the world had retreated from the abyss of its own destruction through nuclear war….though few probably remember….

Around the same time, the numbers of those living worldwide with HIV reached 42,000,000, as much of the world continues to teeter on an equally devastating abyss that has already claimed 22,000,000 lives, greater than the death toll of 200 Hiroshimas.

This is not purely a catastrophe of the developing world, already, more Americans have died of Aids to date than in all the wars they fought in the 20th century. With 1:150 people worldwide now living with what the World Health Organisation describes as “..the most deadly infectious disease of our age…”, the doomsday clock continues to tick towards midnight.

We are periodically alerted to the plight of many Sub-Saharan countries in Southern Africa where in some cases 25% of the population are infected (37% of the adult population in Botswana), but this could prove the tip of the iceberg as the reality of the Asian epidemic unfolds. While China’s claim to only 22,000 cases is expected in reality to equal India’s current 5,000,000 estimated infections, both are believed to be heading for nearly 40,000,000 between them by 2010.

At the current rate of increase in known cases, 1:100 could be reached globally within a decade.

The idea that we can treat HIV here and ignore its explosion abroad is nonsense. While HIV continues unabated elsewhere, the UK will continue to have to deal with new infections. Tokenistic responses to the global epidemic exacerbate the problem as HIV develops resistance to medications if not treated fully - ultimately risking a new drug resistant epidemic here. At the same time, the re-emergence of old diseases due to increasing poverty and HIV-related health problems threatens us with old epidemics, some of which have themselves become drug resistant, such as TB (once virtually eradicated).

The existence of treatments in the UK has been a great advance for many people, but as we keep saying, they are not a cure. It is only an attempt to control the virus in those already infected. The real trick is not just to contain it, but to eradicate it, which is impossible in isolation and requires an effective international approach.

Responsibility to tackle the problem head on lies with the industrialised countries who not only have the resources (…and the self interest), but much of the responsibility for the way the international crisis has unfolded.

Poverty creates the infrastructure of the global epidemic. Overcrowding, unemployment, poor education, poor nutrition and health care, create the environment for new infections to spread unchecked. The system of global trade agreements and international debt limit the capacity for developing countries to pull out of this cycle, with many paying more to finance debt repayment than on any of these individual problems.

Where aid has been forthcoming, it has so far been either too little too late, or a cynical advancement of ‘other’ agendas. Three years after its establishment by the United Nations, the Global Fund on AIDS has continually failed to attract the $10 billion annually it needs to dent the pandemic. US President Bush’s announcement last year of a $15 billion aid package has received widespread coverage but little criticism. Behind its apparent generosity is a deliberate attempt to undermine the Global Fund which the American ‘New Conservatives’ have seen from the start as a permissive left wing conspiracy, taking as a does a starting point of human rights, and highlighting the need to address poverty and the rights of women. While the UN fund struggles for money (in part due to lack of US cooperation), the US ties its offer of aid to a host of conditions from the acceptance of ‘Bible Belt’ morality (promoting abstinence from sex rather than education and empowerment, which has already cost some successful programmes their funding), to lifting restrictions on American GM food imports.

The consequences of not addressing these fundamental issues of the world economy are potentially devastating. The cycle of growing poverty and increasing infections will continue as economically productive populations decline while dependent populations increase.

Combating HIV in the ‘developing’ world is neither altruistic nor a luxury. It is a necessity in our own interests to avoid the re-emergence of new drug resistant diseases including HIV. However, treatments are the tip of the iceberg in the long term. Our starting point has to be a recognition that the world epidemic is a problem for us all, as much as the one in the UK, and that survival is a fundamental human right.

To this end, George House Trust is launching its 1:150 campaign, to support the growing calls for international debt relief; increasing availability of all the drugs required for effective treatment worldwide; increasing the proportion of national income in the West allocated for overseas development aid, and the dismantling of restrictive trade agreements and patent systems that protect drug company profit at the expense of human lives.

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