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Change in Thinking Needed to Fight, Understand AIDS
WASHINGTON, February 3, 2005 � Tackling the exponential growth of AIDS in Africa and elsewhere requires new ways of thinking about the problem, according to Paul Zeitz, executive director of the Global AIDS Alliance, a Washington-based advocacy group looking to mobilize and educate groups to fight the disease. �AIDS really is a manifestation of injustice in the world,� he told the spring 2005 IRP fellows. �To achieve progress against AIDS, some of these injustices have to be fixed.�
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| Paul Zeitz |
By gender, race, economic level and sexual behavior, AIDS represents an injustice because it disproportionately strikes those already at a disadvantage, Zeitz said. Women, for example, can be at greater risk for infection after marriage, as husbands with �large social lives� bring the disease home with them. In their case, preaching abstinence until marriage as the primary method of preventing the spread of the disease makes little sense. Zeitz said many women in developing countries have less access to health care after they are married, as they have fewer opportunities to leave the home. He believes it would be better to change attitudes toward women, educate everyone about the spread of the disease and give men and women the means to stop its proliferation.
Zeitz, who holds an MD as well as a master�s of public health, worked as a doctor for numerous government agencies and in many foreign countries, where he saw both death and hope. �Everyone around me is dying,� he said of what he saw in Zambia. �The paradox is, we have the technology [to fight disease]. Why don�t we deliver it?� He thought he could do more trying to change minds in the developed world than fighting the disease on the ground.
Zeitz is impatient with those who don�t see the need to act differently and act quickly, including � especially � the U.S. government. He argued that the United States� �hyper-unilateralist� approach is redundant and often harmful. When the U.S. set up rules for buying drugs to treat AIDS patients in Africa and other developing countries, for example, there was an initial requirement to buy only brand-name drugs, which cost four times as much as generics. Now, Zeitz said, the United States has approved one generic manufacturer for the program and others are under consideration, but it still insists on establishing its own system to manage and distribute the drugs, even though UNICEF has an international system in place.
He also charged that �right-wing groups� with ties to the Bush administration are forcing the government away from programs like condom social marketing and �systematically defunding prevention.� He claimed that in order to please the U.S., some of Uganda�s leaders have begun denouncing the condom marketing that helped ease that country�s epidemic.
Zeitz said the media have also been part of the problem. Too often, he said, the media buy into longstanding and subtle prejudices about AIDS and Africa, and contribute to a feeling of hopelessness. �There is such grotesque misinformation and lies about what�s possible in Africa,� he said, adding that he believes that African countries have the ability to change the situation, and many are doing so.
Copyright © 2005 International Reporting Project. All Rights Reserved.