[Chanting] 'Broken promises kill'
'Broken promises kill' Protest at the XVIII International AIDS Conference, Vienna 18 July 2010
I'm protesting because at the global level right now
there is a shortage in funding of HIV/AIDS.
[Chanting] 'Stop the Epidemic'
If all HIV-infected people could be treated,
because HIV-infected patients when they are treated
do not transmit any more,
we could stop the epidemic in 30 years.
[Chanting] 'Fund AIDS, no retreat'
The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM)
was established in 2001 to help fight these diseases
in developing countries around the world.
In ten years it has committed 19.3 billion Dollars
to programmes in 144 countries.
It saved more than 4.9 million lives;
2.5 million people were treated for HIV and AIDS,
6 million people received live-saving drugs for TB,
and 104 million bed nets for malaria were distributed.
The Global Fund prevents 3600 deaths every day.
10 years ago, with the UNGASS Declaration,
countries all over the world pledged
to achieve universal access by 2010.
And here we are in 2010, and support, financial support
to achieve universal access is completely inadequate.
Now what we're seeing is that funding
is not coming in at the rate it needs to be coming in.
The financial crisis is being used as an excuse
to cut off AIDS funding.
The economies will die, everything will die,
if they do not fullfill their promises.
Because if they had to lead economies that are sound,
they must have sound people.
All Eastern-Europe is actually dependant
on the Global Fund money, it's the major donor,
it's the main donor of for example
harm reduction for injecting drug users.
If we reduce the funding of the Global Fund,
we are going to lose 10-15 years of work in the field.
Several countries, major donors have begun to scale back
their funding of the Global Fund.
One of those countries is the United States,
Obama made bold promises during his campaign
to increase funding of the Global Fund
and has not yet kept those promises.
In fact, here in Austria, where we stand today,
the Austrian Government while they've given some money
for this conference that we're participating in
has not contributed any money to the Global Fund.
When the financial system was under pressure two years ago,
in a couple of weeks time all the Western governments
came together with, I believe,
the economists estimated at 8 trillion dollars
to rescue the financial system, which needed to be rescued, OK,
but that proves that when there is political will,
when there is political commitment to solve a problem, they can do it.
It strikes me as we listen to this:
we want 20 billion dollars for the Global Fund,
that the BP has taken that out of their bank account
to support clean up of the Gulf.
If they can turn around and take 20 billion dollars
out of their bank account, think in reality
how easy it is to get that 20 billion dollars
to give to the Global Fund to actually save people's lives
all around the globe.
We see that some countries soon will not be eligible
to the Global Fund, like Belarus, like Azerbaijan,
like Kazachstan, some other countries,
and this is mainly because there's not enough money
in the Global Fund and donors are pushing:
'OK, we have not enough money so let's prioritize
where the sort of biggest problems are.
And countries that are doing well,
that are managing to prevent HIV epidemic
are becoming punished.
The idea is that the countries are rich enough
to fund the epidemic themselves, but what's happening
in our region is that because stigma and discrimination
are so high and because the epidemic is not prioritized,
the money isn't going where it needs to go,
so people in our region with HIV and people in our region
who are at risk for HIV actually have smaller chances
of getting the treatment and prevention that they need
than in countries that are much poorer.
We, communities of those living with HIV are very much scared
about those years what are coming after Global Fund leaves Belarus.
100%, absolutely all medicaments are covered by Global Fund.
The Government doesn't spend any rubel for medicaments
for HIV-positive people.
95% of the activities that are right now financed
by the Global Fund will terminate at the same moment
when those grants are finished, when the Global Fund
stops financing these grants in Serbia.
The people in need deserve the support and assistance,
and the Global Fund is there as the best mechanism to assist them,
to provide them support and to save their lives.
Any kind of step back has a very high price:
a price that we can count in human lives.
We need to shame our governments,
we need to shame our governments
for not paying their share.
We should tell our governments:
you could do it for the financial system,
you could do it also to save people.
In our case we want to make sure that the Global Fund
is adequatly funded so that we can start
putting an end to these three killer diseases.
[Chanting] 'Treat the people, fund the fund!'
Help keep the Global Fund global!
Join oone of the actions and sign the petition at
globalfundreplenishment.org
Subtitles by: Ferenc Bagyinszky and István Gábor Takács