The Aids Industry Sure Knows How to Blow its Own Trumpet

Yesterday was World Aids Day again and in Kenya you couldn't miss the copious amounts of advertising, bunting, leafleting, t-shirts, sun visors and other paraphernalia of the industry. High and not so high officials were out in strength to collect their per diem, without which, presumably, nothing important could happen. There were the mobile testing clinics in areas that already have static testing clinics and millions and millions of condoms distributed.

For all it's faults, the Aids industry has published some figures that certainly look good. Botswana, which has one of the worst HIV epidemics in the world, has the highest percentage in any African country of people on antiretroviral therapy (ART), the highest rates of HIV testing and the highest number of women on ART to prevent mother to child transmission (PMTCT). They also have the third highest percentage of children on ART.

Over several decades, the campaigns to recognise the rights of HIV positive people to receive treatment have been successful in a lot of countries. In many developing countries, a sizable percentage of HIV positive people in need of treatment are on treatment. In the West, very few babies born to HIV positive mothers are themselves HIV positive. Indeed, the percentage of HIV positive babies born to HIV positive mothers is declining in a number of developing countries too and should be relatively low by now in a country like Botswana, where such a high percentage of HIV positive mothers are receiving PMTCT.

But rights seem to be most commonly recognised for those who are already infected with HIV. If you read various developing country HIV strategic plans (which are curiously similar, despite the epidemics being very different in quality), you will notice that the word 'rights' is rarely used except in relation to HIV positive people, mainly in relation to access to treatment. The rights of those who are not yet HIV positive, and that's most people, are rarely mentioned. Yet they have a right to the things that will ensure that they remain HIV negative.

Of course, it is hard to quantify the effects of the various HIV prevention programmes that have been rolled out in Kenya and other African countryies. Most of them were run by wealthy organisations who could afford the 'research' and publicity that would make them look very successful. The reality is that very little is known about preventing HIV and, beneath the hype, few programmes have been truly successful.

I would be the first one to admit that the very idea of cutting HIV transmission is fraught with difficulties. Many things have been tried, some of them perhaps even well thought out. But in the end, there is very little money to be made out of prevention and therefore very little money put into it. Condom distribution is an exception, but where there is little or no health or science education, let alone sexual and reproductive health education, condoms haven't really taken off that well. You may have heard otherwise but there are good commercial reasons for that.

The problem with the majority of the prevention programmes that have received some of the relatively small amount of money that is available for HIV prevention is abstinence. Most programmes relied on the idea that if people would just abstain from sex, they would not be likely to be infected. The more liberal advocated abstinence until marriage, until it was noticed that more and more people are becoming infected by their spouse. But various programmes were cobbled together that, one way or another, advocated abstinence or what amounts to abstinence. People didn't abstain and most of them won't. This is not something peculiar about developing countries. Abstinence campaigns have failed where ever they have been tried.

The reason I mention the rights of people who are HIV negative is that many of them will, sooner or later, become infected with HIV because one or several of their rights are presently being denied. People, whether adults, children, male or female, have a right to health and a right to treatment when they are sick. Yet more people in Kenya and other developing countries are dying of easily treatable and curable diseases than are dying of Aids.

Children have a right to a decent education and part of that should include levels of health and science education that should give them the prerequisites to attain enough understanding of sex, sexuality and reproductive health to avoid becoming infected with HIV or other sexually transmitted diseases and to avoid unplanned pregnancies. In a word, people need education to lead healthy lives.

People have a right to a decent standard of living for themselves and their children, they have a right to adequate food and nutrition, they have a right to good standards of governance and security, water, sanitation, infrastructure and many other things. They have a right to a legal system that protects them from harm and persecution and the like. Women need to be given the same rights as men, in the workplace, in the economy, in education, in health and everywhere else. Men who have sex with men, intravenous drug users and commercial sex workers need their rights protected.

It is the denial of the sorts of rights mentioned above, along with various other rights, that leaves people vulnerable to becoming infected with HIV and suffering many other serious consequences. People in developing countries who are suffering from HIV now, and those who have died of it, were likely denied one or several of their rights. HIV is not transmitted in isolation from people's circumstances, from the conditions in which they live and work.

Those who are HIV positive and those who are HIV negative are equally entitled to their rights, though skewed funding for Aids would suggest that this is not the case. In order to avoid transmitting HIV to others and in order to remain HIV negative, everybody's rights need to be protected. In short, everyone is entitled to these rights and without them, the treatment and care programmes for people who are HIV positive will be, to a large extent, in vain; the half hearted prevention efforts will also be in vain.

Prevention has proved to be a slippery fish. But treatment and care for one disease in isolation from all the other things people can and do suffer from has also been less successful than it should have been. There is little point in treating one incurable disease and ignoring the many others that are more easily treatable and often even curable. But that is what's happening. The Aids industry is just too rich and powerful to allow people to know that.