23. July 2010
Africa & AIDS: Challenges & Opportunities
On July 22, 2010, the Austrian Foundation for World Population and International Cooperation (SWI) hosted a press roundtable discussion entitled “Africa & AIDS: Challenges and Opportunities” at Café Landtmann in Vienna.
On July 22, 2010, the Austrian Foundation for World Population and International Cooperation (SWI) hosted a press roundtable discussion entitled “Africa & AIDS: Challenges and Opportunities” at Café Landtmann in Vienna.
The speakers provided expert views on challenging the AIDS pandemic through family planning and educational measures, and addressed Austria’s lack of commitment to providing funding to combating AIDS in Africa.
Sahlu Haile, Regional Program Advisor in Sub-Saharan Africa for the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, spoke about family planning and its effectiveness in containing and reducing new HIV infections in Africa. Effective family planning addresses several of Africa’s health and demographic challenges by not only reducing the rate of new infections, but also the number of illegal abortions and female mortality due to complications during and after the procedure. Haile also addressed the need for more foreign aid to provide for family planning across the continent, the conditional and conservative US policy towards foreign aid after the election of President Bush, and the HIV/AIDS fatigue felt during the economic crisis. Haile concluded by citing statistics that give pause for thought: “If 0 million was made available each year, it would provide four million women with access to family planning, avoid 2.1 million unwanted pregnancies, avert 825,000 abortions, and save the lives of 70,000 girls and 4,000 women. It truly is ironic that conservative governments, who refuse to fund programs that might lead to abortions, do not fund approaches that have been proven effective in averting abortions: family planning.”
Dr. David Wessner, associate Professor of Biology at Davidson College, NC, USA, highlighted the need for effective and context based HIV/AIDS education. In his view, HIV/AIDS can only be addressed using a three-pronged approach: treatment, prevention, and education. Dr. Wessner specializes in innovative approaches to spreading AIDS awareness among young people in the US; through a series of podcasts, a blog, and a YouTube channel, Dr. Wessner and his students aim to make information available to young people “how they want it, when they want it.” Dr. Wessner stressed that innovative approaches also need to be taking to disseminating information in the African context, for example through street theater or during religious gatherings. He concluded by highlighting the fact the fact that although there was a palpable sense of optimism at the conference, researchers, governments, and donors could not become complacent with their accomplishments, but rather must keep forging ahead in the fight against HIV/AIDS.
Judith Schwentner, the Green Party’s spokesperson for Women’s Affairs and Development and a Member of Parliament, discussed on the Austrian government’s lack of budgetary commitment to fighting HIV/AIDS, citing a letter from the Austrian Foreign Minister to the Head of the Global Fund in which the Minister made clear that there are no provisions in the budget at least until 2014 to fund extensive research or programs concerning AIDS. Mag. Schwentner also emphasized the need to promote sexual education and awareness about AIDS among schoolchildren: “I just read a study last week in which the researchers found that a large number of youth think that they can wash off the AIDS virus in the shower. I was horrified.” In her capacity as the Green Party’s spokeswoman, she pledged to continue to pressure the government to make funding AIDS programs a priority, and to increase sexual education classes in schools throughout Austria.
SWI hosted this event in the context of the EU-Funded project “Africa’s Demographic Challenges,” which aims to spread awareness for these issues in Austria, Germany, and Hungary.