Today is the 20th annual World AIDS Day. The challenge for AIDS activists and campaigners is to pique the interest of editors and journalists to ensure coverage of what has become a predictable event: the UN or some other body claiming we are on the brink of a global catastrophe, and that only billions more dollars of donor funding can prevent the biggest humanitarian crisis of all time from getting worse.
Except this year, many people from within the global health community are beginning to rebel against this formula, detailed in this provocative piece from the Associated Press. As people such as Roger England point out, AIDS is undoubtedly a a great tragedy, but so too are the myriad easily preventable diseases that kill even more people - such as diarhoea or pneumonia.
Why don't these diseases have their own UN agency and billions of funding?
It is also becoming increasingly clear that the UN has not been the careful custodian of the billions of dollars entrusted to it for HIV palliative care. Aside from the numerous scandals that have surrounded Global Fund grants, it may be that the whole WHO 'public health' treatment model is storing up many problems for the future, such as unsustainable levels of drug resistance.
Treatment for all by 2010 may yet turn out to be a reality. But at what cost to wider public health?
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