How will we know when the world has finally woken up to the real extent of the threat posed by communicable diseases such as HIV/AIDS? How many more World Aids Days will pass before we see the kind of response called for by Nelson Mandela, who recently described the challenge of combating HIV/AIDS as greater than the challenge of apartheid itself?
Twenty years after the discovery of the HIV virus mass protests against the ravages of AIDS and other communicable diseases are as rare now as anti-apartheid protests on an overseas tour by the South African rugby team. There are no boycotts against governments which discriminate against people living with HIV/AIDS. There are no candlelight vigils to protest against the lack of research into a cure for malaria.
One can only ponder what it might take to get people as energized about the fact that 13 million men, women and children die each year from Aids, TB, malaria, measles, meningitis and other preventable diseases as people of conscience were in decades past about apartheid in South Africa.
Surely some great mobilization of humanity must now begin if we are to meet the challenges posed by these statistics and to implement practical but achievable measures such as the World Health Organization's proposal to have three million people on anti-retroviral therapy by the year 2005. People are not only required to show support for financing such initiatives but to assist in the delivery of a solution in many challenging environments around the world.
Perhaps the example of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies is one modest ray of light at the end of a tunnel etched with the names of dead generations in the developing world who never had a chance of survival.
The International Federation and its 181 member national Red Cross and Red Crescent societies, whether in the United States or tiny Vanuatu, are best known for responding to man-made and natural disasters. Historically, these disasters range across famine, epidemics, earthquakes, floods, drought and people displaced by conflict. Internationally, we have responded to well over a thousand such events in the last 80-odd years.
Typically too at this time of the year the International Federation would be launching an annual appeal which would read like an exotic encyclopaedia of doom, responding to an amazing breadth of disaster scenarios which reflected the challenges in communities around the world where Red Cross and Red Crescent volunteers assessed the risks and responded to the needs.
In recent years those volunteers' assessment of the real risks has become more sober and penetrating as they look at the world through the prism of communicable disease in addition to that of natural disasters.
Of course, the Red Cross and Red Crescent will continue to need a massive preparedness programme in Bangladesh to avoid a repetition of the Great Cyclone of November 1970 which claimed over half-a-million lives. We would be foolish not to continue responding to the great poverty which has taken root in the Balkans, through building the capacity of the new Red Cross societies which have risen from the ashes of former Yugoslavia. The recent record of Atlantic hurricane seasons demands that we adopt appropriate preparedness measures in the Americas.
Nonetheless, the message is coming up from the grassroots that while millions of lives continue to be turned upside down by natural disasters, it rather pales in comparison to the loss of life from preventable communicable diseases.
"It's health, stupid," seems to be what our millions of Red Cross and Red Crescent staff and volunteers around the world were telling us as we put together our annual appeal for 2004 on their behalf. As the World Disasters Report has pointed out, while around 100,000 lives may be lost each year to disasters, 13 million lives are lost to preventable infectious diseases.
So it is that we are seeing a shift of profound significance in how we in the Red Cross and Red Crescent respond to the needs in the world around us. For the first time in our long history we are now seeking significantly more funding for our health programmes than for any other area of work including disaster management. The appeal launched today by the International Federation seeks Euros 140 million, and just over 40 per cent of that will go to fight communicable diseases mainly in Africa and Asia.
This is not just wishful thinking. Over the last couple of years in Africa, the Red Cross and Red Crescent has joined forces with the UN, governments and other partners to vaccinate more than 110 million children for measles and 70 million for polio. Programmes to reduce HIV/AIDS related stigma and discrimination to prevent future infection have been initiated in 35 African countries.
It is clear that brave efforts are being made to demonstrate new thinking on the challenges posed by infectious diseases notably the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. We run the risk of frustrating these efforts if we cannot galvanize public opinion and thereby induce politicians to prioritize the global fight against disease and to allocate the appropriate resources.