Report from D.C. World AIDS Day Action

Unlike the weather reports we heard throughout the day, it wasn't wet. In fact, despite the wind, the weather was warm...quite beautiful actually. The World AIDS Day Rally was held across from the White House in Lafayette Park where the view of the President Bush's office and residence (and the security men perched a top the White House) were superb.

The D.C. rally protested U.S. policies that inhibit:

1. Debt cancellation without strings attached so that countries in the Global South can allocate funds to hire and pay healthcare workers and purchase HIV/AIDS medications. Check out our updated Debt & AIDS fact sheet to learn more.
2. Universal access to quality medical care
3. Equitable wages for healthcare workers
4. A government-funded needle exchange program in Washington, D.C. (Currently, DC is barred from using local tax dollars to fund needle exchange initiatives. To date, the District has the highest number of new AIDS cases in the U.S. Source: Prevention Works!)

The Washington Post ran an article and most of the wires had photographers at the event. Read the the Post’s article, "We Need More Than Slogans", and scroll through the Yahoo! Photo Gallery to see photos from the D.C. rally and what other groups did for World AIDS Day around the globe.

Also, an article sent to our attention by David Bryden at Health Global Access Project is recommended reading. The piece, "How the U.S. Can Help Haiti" ran in The Miami Herald on World AIDS Day, December 1. An excerpt is below:

In rural parts of Haiti, the lack of healthcare workers leads to the inability to test, diagnose and treat AIDS patients. There are only five doctors for every 100,000 people in the country.

In the hospitals where I worked, I saw children dying of dehydration because there were not enough nurses available to give them intravenous fluids. There are almost no doctors living in the rural central plateau, and the few that are there are commuting three hours from Port-au-Prince. Physicians told me of their frustration at the lack of nurses and community healthcare workers to help care for their patients on a more consistent basis. Read the full Op-Ed.