Today is World AIDS Day
When Bono visited the paediatric ward of the central hospital in Kigali last May, eight-year-old Denyse Mushimiyimana was almost comatose. Newly diagnosed with HIV, her tiny skeletal frame lay motionless on her bed while her distraught father, who is also infected, sat at her bedside. She didn't utter a word. Three months later, Denyse was back at her Rwandan school in a neatly pressed uniform, laughing and skipping as usual with her friends. Her parents are naturally delighted.
Denyse is an example of the Lazarus effect of antiretroviral therapy. "Aids is no longer a death sentence," Bono said. "Just two pills a day will bring someone who is at death's door back to full health, back to full life. Doctors call it 'the Lazarus effect'. I've seen it myself and I have to say that it's nothing short of a miracle. These pills are available at any corner drugstore. They cost less than a dollar a day, but the poorest people in Africa earn less than a dollar a day. They can't afford them, and so they die. It's unnecessary. It's insane."
In view of this, last March, Bono and the philanthropist Bobby Shriver launched a campaign called RED to allow big businesses and customers to contribute to the fight against HIV and Aids. So far, six companies have joined up - Amex, Apple, Armani, Gap, Converse and Motorola - and brought out RED products.
A percentage of sales is donated to the Global Fund, an independent organisation set up in 2002 to fight Aids, TB and malaria. Motorola, for example, donates £10 for every RED phone bought, as well as 5 per cent of the purchaser's monthly bill. Gap and Armani donate 50 per cent of the profit from their RED collections.
Donations from RED products are specifically used to combat Aids in Africa. Just over $10m (£5.1m) has been raised so far. "The RED campaign is one of the most exciting and hopeful things that has happened in the five years that the Global Fund has existed," said Professor Richard Feachem, executive director of the Global Fund. "Through it major corporations and ordinary men and women all over the world are engaging positively and constructively in the fight again HIV/Aids in Africa."
About $6m has gone to Rwanda and $4m to Swaziland to support programmes particularly aimed at women and children. In Rwanda it is being used to increase testing and the availability of treatment. Antiretroviral therapy now costs about $140 per person per year, compared with $10,000 in 2000. The dramatic reduction in cost is a result of the Global Fund buying huge amounts of drugs for people too poor to buy them, as well as the Clinton Foundation's price negotiations with the Indian drug manufacturers.
Not only are drugs cheaper, they are much easier to take. Five years ago, patients had to take numerous different pills at varying stages of the day. Treatment now is two pills a day. Rwanda's compliance rate - the ability of patients to take medicine properly - is now higher than in the UK or US.
The Independent Red Edition link
There are several more articles in that edition. . . .
And what does one do when someone you love is being stolen away from you? Cry?
And why can't we do better in caring for the millions and millions affected? And the one? The one we love? I have no answers. I wish I did.
This is from last year's Aids Day: