Archive for November, 2008
World AIDS Day
Hope to do a proper post on this tomorrow, but for the time being there is this from Joseph Healy, one of the London Green Party’s candidates for the European Elections in May 2009.
——————————————————————————————-
Tomorrow is World Aids Day. The disease is still causing havoc across Africa, Eastern Europe and increasingly Asia. Jean Lambert will be attending a World Aids Day event in London with the Food Chain and I will be attending the pre-launch of a new film on the subject. For anyone in London there is also the screening of this film about Swaziland as part of World Aids Day. Thankfully with the end of Mbeki’s period as South African president, the new Health Minister is tackling the issue seriously.
I hope that people will support events in their own areas over the next few days. Many lives can still be saved with a proper prevention programme and a fully financed treatment regime in many poor countries.
Joseph Healy
1 comment November 30, 2008
Mass testing and treatment for HIV
Interesting plans published in the Lancet and reported in the Guardian today in time for World Aids Day on the 1st December (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/26/aids-testing-world-health-organisation).
The plans are for universal testing for HIV in areas of high prevalence and treatment of all those who have the virus with anti-retrovirals (ARV’s). In the western world, treatment with ARVs is usually delayed until a patient’s status reaches a certain level (a CD4 count of below 350) but the study authors are suggesting that all those with the virus should be treated regardless of CD4 count since there is an additional ‘public health’ benefit that being on an ARV reduces risk of HIV being transmitted to others.
Of course there are major ethnical dillemas here: doctors would asking patients to take a drug which has strong side-effects when the benefit is more to ‘public health’ than it is to the individual patient. However, as long as patients are informed and not forced I think it may well be an important part of the solution to this epidemic which is causing such huge amounts of suffering throughout the world.
It is not the ideal solution and usually I’d be much more critical of such a scheme in terms of its ethical implications (why can’t we make sure people are provided with adequate support so that they can begin on ARVs at the appropriate time? &c.) but this is an exceptional epidemic and I think if we wait until a better programme is rolled out, we will be waiting a very very long time and a great deal more people will have lost their lives due to AIDS. We need to deal with the crisis and we really do need to deal with it now. The authors of the paper suggest that their plan could reduce HIV prevalence to under 1% in under 50 years. This would be a huge acheivement.
Of course, this plan will need to be debated before it is rolled out and far more knowledgeable people than me will probably find important holes to pick in it. I am keen to see how the debate evolves and to see whether other arguments change my view. But I hope it will prove to be as useful an idea as it sounds and can form part of a positive move against a virus that has blighted so many lives and has been so difficult to control. A solution of some sort needs to be found to control it.
I have to say here that it goes without saying that poverty reduction, education and provision of condoms also need to form central planks in any HIV strategy, particularly in the long-term. Indeed, all three of these are vital even in the absence of a HIV epidemic!
1 comment November 26, 2008
Woolas on Immigration
The UK’s policy of placing asylum seekers and their children in detention centres while their claims are investigated is shameful. The last thing individuals fleeing genuine prosecution need is to be put behind bars, experiencing further trauma.
In this context, Immigration Minister Phil Woolas’s comments (Asylum-seeker charities are just playing the system, says Woolas,18th November) are particularly disturbing. Rather than ‘playing the system’, these NGOs are highlighting the absurdity of how the system treats people fleeing persecution and seeking asylum on our shores and seeking the right to contribute to our society in the same way as everyone else.
With a government appeal about removing the right to access healthcare for failed asylum seekers being heard on the same day as these comments were reported, as though it were acceptable to use healthcare to coax people out of the UK, I am left wondering whether to government cares at all about human rights or whether they are systematically trying to deny them to some of the most vulnerable people on this planet as a means of appearing to do ’something’ rather than dealing with the real issues behind this complex debate.
One can only hope that there is a sea change in the way the government treats asylum seekers and other migrants before the issue is further compounded by environmental refugees fleeing the effects of climate change, described by Uganda’s president as an ‘act of aggression by the rich world against the poor one’.
It is time we starting looking at the positives brought to the UK and Europe by immigration rather than constantly focussing on apparent negatives.
1 comment November 21, 2008
From Boris the Buffon to Boris the Disaster
When Boris was originally voted in, many people said we should give him a chance before we start complaining. We were told we should wait and see what he did rather than assuming he’d do bad. I disagreed: I felt his policies were clear, and now I think there is plenty of evidence as to how Boris has already been a disaster for London:
1) He has abolished plans for the £25 gas-guzzler charge. Why anyone needs a 4×4 in London is more than a little beyond me. He complains that Ken left a big hole in TfL finances: well this is why there’s a hole… Ken was going to introduce this charge and channel the money into public transport. Instead we are going to have a inflation busting 11% increase in bus fares and a 6% overall rise to plug the whole Boris has created.
2) He has scrapped a deal with Venezuela which would have given Caracas urban planning expertise in return for cheap oil to power London’s buses. This was funding half-price bus fares for Londoners on income support. In other words, for people on income support bus fares will soon be doubling.
3) He has scrapped plans for a cross-river tram service connecting Brixton to Kings X which would have taken pressure off the rush-hour tube, amongst several other transport plans he has scrapped.
4) He has scrapped the 50% affordable homes target without providing any reasonable alternative solutions to London’s housing crisis.
All this after 6 months? Another 3 and a half years to go? Oh dear.
Ken Livingstone was far from perfect, but he was a pretty good Mayor as far as Mayors go and he was many-fold better than the current incumbent and I sincerely hope that Boris will only have a single term. London cannot afford to be messed up any further!
Progressive London is a coalition of Londoners challenging Boris and can be found out about here: www.progressivelondon.org.uk
1 comment November 19, 2008
Green Worker November 2008
Well done to James Caspell for putting the latest edition of the Green Worker together.
Find it here!
Add comment November 13, 2008
