Michel Sidibé’s Charm Offensive Against AIDS

Pacific Friends is looking forward to welcome to Australia next month UNAIDS executive director Michel Sidibé. In 2010 we already had the pleasure of a visit by Michel in which he spoke about the challenges and responses to the global HIV/AIDS pandemic.

This year’s Australian visit of the executive director comes just after The New York Times featured this week a wonderful article that chronicles Michel Sidibé’s so-called ‘charm offensive against AIDS’.

Michel Sidibe: A video interview with the executive director of UNAIDS on the importance of diplomacy and social change in fighting the AIDS epidemic. Source: The New York Times

Some excerpts from the not-to-be-missed article on The New York Times website:

With a combination of bonhomie and persistence, he has delivered difficult messages to African presidents very persuasively in his three years in office: Convince your men to get circumcised. Tell your teenage girls not to sleep with older men for money. Shelve your squeamishness and talk about condoms. Help prostitutes instead of jailing them. Ask your preachers to stop railing against homosexuals and order your police forces to stop beating them. Let Western scientists test new drugs and vaccines, despite the inevitable rumors that Africans are being used as guinea pigs.

Dr. Aaron Motsoaledi, South Africa’s health minister, said Mr. Sidibe pursued him relentlessly at a United Nations conference in New York until they met. They became co-conspirators in getting Jacob Zuma, the country’s new president, to budget more money for AIDS drugs and to press drug companies to lower prices. “I was new to my office, and this man was just chasing me,” Dr. Motsoaledi said. “He insisted South Africa must take leadership on AIDS for Africa. I said: ‘What about Botswana?’ But he insisted.”

In a major speech in 2010, Mr. Zuma increased the national AIDS budget by 30 percent and, along with Mr. Sidibe, publicly took an AIDS test.

Globally, Mr. Sidibé says, he is trying to “be a voice for those without one.” The groups that most need help, he argues, are the ones that no politician wants to be photographed with: gay men, prostitutes, transvestites, heroin users.

Mr. Sidibé has also fought hard against harsh anti-gay laws in Africa, against hate crimes like the “corrective rapes” of lesbians by South African gangs — and against the widespread belief that homosexuality is a Western import.

“If we can win this one,” Mr. Sidibé will say, “I can go back home and sit under my mango tree and feel proud.”

China Central Television (CCTV) interview with Sir Elton John

UNAIDS Goodwill Ambassador James Chau joined us for last year’s World AIDS Day. James is also news anchor at China Central Television (CCTV) and made sure that the World AIDS Day celebrations in Sydney were widely covered in the Chinese media. His interview with Sir Elton John has been widely broadcasted in China, reaching some 200 million viewers.

Of course, we all know that Elton John is immensely popular all around the world, but he is one of the few entertainers from the ‘West’ who is truly well-known amongst all generations in China. James Chau spoke with Elton John about his pioneering action on AIDS and his Foundation. Below the interview and a longer version of the interview that was aired as a holiday special on the 30th of December 2011.

UNAIDS Goodwill Ambassador James Chau

UNAIDS Goodwill Ambassador James Chau spoke yesterday morning with ABC News Australia about World AIDS Day and the fight against HIV and AIDS.

Australian Landmarks will turn red for World AIDS Day 2011

Today and tomorrow evening landmarks in Australia will be bathed in red for the global launch of World AIDS Day on 1 December 2011. Around the world, over 50 landmarks and iconic monuments will turn red in support of an AIDS-free generation by 2015.

The Sydney Opera House, Harbour Bridge pylons and Canberra’s New and Old Parliament Houses and Black Mountain Tower will turn red as part of a global campaign to create an AIDS-free generation by 2015;  and to reduce cases of mother-to-child transmission of HIV from 390,000 cases per year to zero by 2015.

On Wednesday 30 November, a World AIDS Day reception at the Opera House will be attended by the Governor-General and prominent HIV experts, advocates and activists involved in the global response to HIV/AIDS. The event is being coordinated by Pacific Friends of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

“Creating an AIDS free generation by 2015 is an ambitious but attainable goal. It is one to which the world must remain committed” said Pacific Friends Chair Wendy McCarthy AO.

The Australian Minister for Health and Ageing, the Hon Nicola Roxon, will be speaking at the Reception, as will the Lord Mayor of Sydney, the Hon Clover Moore MP.

A major theme of this year’s World AIDS Day is the compelling need to eliminate transmission of HIV from mother-to-child. One of the speakers at the Sydney Opera House will be Dr Mobumo Kiromat, the Clinical Director for the Prevention of Parent to Child Transmission with the Clinton Health Access Initiative in Papua New Guinea.

Another key speaker is Mr James Chau, Presenter and Senior Anchor with the China Central Television Network (CCTV) who also serves UNAIDS Goodwill Ambassador. World AIDS Day Sydney will also hear from Robert Mitchell, President of the National Association of People Living with HIV AIDS and Mr Paul McClintock, Chair of Medibank.

Tune in to Twitter tonight for live coverage of the event between 7pm and 10pm on Twitter @PacificFriends #WorldAIDSDay #WAD2011 #GettingToZero #AIDSFreeGeneration2015 #turnRED #HIVisStillHere

Here is some coverage of last year’s event:

Michael Kirby: Summing up the UNAIDS meeting on the criminalisation of HIV

In Geneva, from the 31 August to the 2 September, UNAIDS organised an expert meeting to review the scientific, medical, legal and human rights issues related to the criminalization of HIV exposure and transmission. Justice Michael Kirby, a retired judge of the High Court of Australia and member of Pacific Friends’ Coordinating Committee, was one of the experts to review the application of the criminal law to HIV.

Here an excerpt from an interview with Michael Kirby at the UNAIDS expert meeting in Geneva:

There are some exceptional cases where the criminal law has a role to play. However, the criminal law has been pushed into a whole range of other activities which are counter-productive from the point of view of a public health response to HIV. The use of criminal law is also likely to lead to disproportionate and highly punitive measures which are not helpful in responding to the epidemic in a way that prevents the spread of HIV.

After the meeting Michael Kirby did a wonderful job in summing up the key points and views from the high-level meeting in this report.