ActionAid’s Get On Board Campaign Launches Drive To Revamp HIV/AIDS Fight, Ensure Funding Helps HIV-Positive People
The international development agency ActionAid's Get On Board campaign on Tuesday in Nairobi, Kenya, launched an international drive to overhaul the fight against HIV/AIDS and ensure that funding for the disease helps HIV-positive people, AFP/Yahoo! News reports. The new HIV/AIDS campaign is part of an effort to collect data about the African epidemic and deliver it to the Group of Eight meeting in Scotland in July, according to AFP/Yahoo! News. "An essential part of this campaign is to make the money work: ensuring that the increasing global resources for HIV/AIDS actually result in tangible benefits for those whose name the money is raised," ActionAid CEO Ramesh Singh said, adding, "We must learn the lessons built from the painful experience Africa has gone through: that silence, denial and delayed response are the real killers, it's not HIV/AIDS." Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki spoke at the campaign's launch, saying, "I am sure this provides an opportunity for Kenya and Africa as a whole to influence the world in making HIV/AIDS a global agenda, not just an African agenda," adding, "We must win this fight at whatever cost." About 1.5 million people have died of AIDS-related causes in Kenya since 1984, according to AFP/Yahoo! News (AFP/Yahoo! News, 5/3).
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