AIDS still rife in Africa

Five million AIDS sufferers in central and western Africa have no access to treatment, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said Wednesday, warning of a major treatment gap in the global fight against the disease.

In a new report entitled "Out of Focus", the medical charity said fewer than 24 percent of sufferers have access to anti-retroviral drugs in the two regions, where 2.3 percent of people have the disease.

Though well below Swaziland's 27.7 percent and South Africa's 18.9 percent infection rates, central and western Africa are still significantly above the world average of 0.8 percent.

Around 21 percent of people who contract the virus every year and around half of children born with the disease live in western and central Africa, the charity said.

And a quarter of global AIDS-related deaths occur the two regions, it added.

"Needs remain enormous in central and western Africa where three in four (sufferers) do not have access to anti-AIDS treatments -- that is, five million people," MSF medical coordinator Dr Eric Goemaere said in a statement.

Outlining obstacles to treating the disease, it pointed to limited access to medicine, high costs for the available treatments, problems with testing as well as the stigmatisation of sufferers.

The slow distribution of drugs, poor quality medicines and low standards of drug storage were also identified as problems.

Similar obstacles also contributed to the 11,300 deaths caused by the Ebola virus that ravaged the region from late 2013.

Most Ebola deaths occurred in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

"The global goal of dealing with HIV/AIDS by 2020 will not be met unless priority is given to the fight against the disease in western and central Africa, where the population living with HIV continues to suffer unnecessarily and die in silence," MSF said.

Drought and HIV

In California, the drought is serious. Shortages mean short showers, brown lawns and empty swimming pools. But in sub-Saharan Africa, drought spreads disease, including the still-rampant HIV virus. The phenomenon is more sociological than ecological: Slim harvests slash farmers’ incomes, forcing them to find new ways to earn money. Some turn to sex, according to a new study in The Economic Journal. In a recent article from Stanford’s Center on Food Security and the Environment (FSE):

Analyzing data on more than 200,000 individuals across 19 African countries, the research team finds that by changing sexual behavior, a year of very low rainfall can increase local infection rates by more than 10 percent. That means condoms and sex education aren’t all that’s needed to thwart the epidemic’s spread. Affected farmers also need economic change to help them weather the dry period, without sacrificing their health.

“These are the people who really suffer when the rains fail, and who are forced to turn to more desperate measures to make ends meet,” co-author Marshall Burke, PhD, a fellow at the FSE, said. 

Kenya and AIDS

HIV/AIDS is the main cause of death among 10 to 19-year-olds in Africa and this is the only age group globally where AIDS-related deaths are rising. There are 2.1 million adolescents worldwide living with HIV, 80 percent of them in Africa. The majority do not know they have HIV and became infected at birth or through breastfeeding.

In 2013, there were 250,000 new HIV infections among adolescents, two-thirds among girls, and 120,000 adolescents died from AIDS-related illnesses.

Life can be brutal in Nairobi's slums, with alcoholic parents who fail to provide, or who push their daughters into the sex trade to feed the rest of the family. Girls as young as ten often have sex to survive, only to end up becoming mothers themselves -- infected with the same disease that robbed them of their parents.

"My younger sisters were relying on me so I did it (had sex with men) to provide for them," said one girl who was orphaned at the age of six and found out she was HIV positive when she became pregnant at 14. "I don't have any dreams for my (two year old) daughter's future because I don't know when I am going to die. Maybe she will go through the same experience as me," the 16-year-old said through tears.

There are over 100,000 new HIV infections in Kenya each year, 21 percent of which are among girls and women aged between 15 and 24, said Lilian Otiso, director of services for LVCT, a Kenyan charity providing HIV/AIDS and sexual health services to children trading sex for basic needs in Nairobi slums. "Very many ... are just children with children, and that just continues the vicious cycle," she said. "If we can ... break those new infections, then we would have reached a point where we can start saying we are seeing the end of AIDS," said Otiso

The infection rate among Kenyan females aged 15 to 24 is four times that of males. Girls start having sex younger than boys, usually with older men, and biologically, they get infected more easily. Kenya's HIV prevalence rate has fallen from 13.5 percent in 1999 to 5.6 percent today. It has the fourth largest HIV positive population in the world -- 1.7 million -- most of whom are middle-aged. The head of the national AIDS control programme, Martin Sirengo, said he was looking at reducing the age at which young people can be tested without parental consent, currently 18, and at extending opening hours in health centres to make them easier for adolescents to visit.

A wasted billion dollars

The United States government has spent $1.3 billion since 2005 encouraging Africans to avoid AIDS by practicing abstinence and fidelity did not measurably change sexual behavior and was largely wasted, according toa study.

The researcher, Nathan Lo, analyzed records showing the age of people having sex for the first time, teenage pregnancy and number of sexual partners in international health surveys that have been paid for by the State Department since the 1970s. Mr. Lo said he spent a year analyzing dozens of health surveys that the United States paid for in countries around the world. Originally called the World Fertility Surveys, they were begun in the 1970s. They were later subsumed into the large Demographic and Health Surveys, now paid for by the United States Agency for International Development, that document health behaviors in dozens of countries. Lo compared data from 1998 to the present in 22 African countries, 14 of which received Pepfar money and eight that did not. He looked at answers to three questions that are part of the extensive questionnaire given to people interviewed: What was your age when you had sex for the first time? At what age did you have your first child? How many people have you had sex with in the last year? When answers about age at loss of virginity did not appear to be truthful, he said, he used a conservative form of adjustment, calculating backward from the birth of the first child.

President George W. Bush’s global AIDS plan was enacted in 2003 and marshaled billions of dollars to treat Africans who had AIDS with lifesaving drugs. Conservative Republican leaders in the House of Representatives successfully included a provision that one-third of AIDS prevention money go to programs to encourage abstinence and fidelity. That campaign — known as ABC, for abstain, be faithful and use condoms — was part of the bargain made when Christian conservatives joined with liberals to pass the law. Spending on abstinence and fidelity peaked in 2005 and began to drop after the Obama administration took office.

The differences between the Pepfar  (President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) and non-Pepfar countries did not change after 2005. That indicated “no detectable effect” from the expenditure, he said. The differences were so small that, for example, men in the Pepfar countries appeared to have 0.02 more sexual partners after the abstinence and fidelity funding began than they had before.

How to Dance (poem)

How to Dance 

"Next time you see me walking on the street
Know there's a story that hides in me
Don't look away and pretend that l'm not there
All l want is for someone to care for me

I too have dreams of a better life
That someone will love me as I am
To hold my own child in my arms
And make sure she's safe from harm

What l'd like is some of your affection
Not your pity, just some kind of attention
You think l'm worthless,
You don't even know me
It's not my fault that this
Blood flows through me.

I want you to know that we're just kids
Even though we were born with HIV
Prenatal, virgin contraction
The first of a fighting generation,
We fight against AIDS and discrimination
We're God-made, put there for a reason
It's time to change and now's the reason
Yes, we're special but we're no different

But in the Storm
We've learned how to dance"

From here 

Bush and Aids

George W. Bush  was given  a Global Service award by the University of Denver for his supposed work to fight AIDs in Africa. He has been praised by the likes of Bono, Elton John and Matt Damon (“I would kiss George W. Bush on the mouth for his AIDS work”) Launching this HIV/AIDS project  at the same time as he was launching Cruise missiles at Iraqi power stations, bridges and hospitals provided Bush with a veil of respectability. While  bombing bridges in Baghdad and Basra, the U.S. State Department was giving out anti-HIV vaccinations in Uganda and preaching sexual abstinence to locals there.

The U.S. governmental program to fight HIV/AIDS is formally known as the President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). From the outset, PEPFAR has been run out of the Department of State’s Office of U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator (OGAC).  The project works through many other U.S. government agencies (US AID, etc). PEPFAR, according to its own reports, has given anti-retroviral drugs –according to 2013 GAO report to 5.1 million people, more than half of these in low or middle income countries, many of them in Africa. In recent years PEPFAR has shifted emphasis to training in-country specialists to take over the programs.

 Sounds good but at best, the results have been mixed. A great deal of money has been spent on the program since its inception with questionable, limited – often exaggerated results and few serious follow up studies. From the outset the program has been plagued with criticisms. PEPFAR there is a typical `top down’ bureaucratic affair with very little interaction with “folks on the ground”, similar in many ways to many World Bank/IMF structural adjustment programs.The program is not run out of the United Nations nor organizations like the World Health Organization, but is run bilaterally between the United States and the target nations involved.

 When Bush was in office, PEPFAR was little more than yet another boom for U.S. pharmaceuticals as the program required that the drugs be purchased from the pharmaceuticals holding patents, It was the shift to generics, encouraged according to some sources by Bill Clinton, has led to a significant extension of the program and $1 billion savings over a five year period. As a result, the cost per patient has gone dropped some 400% from 2005-2011 and many more people have been treated.

At the heart of the program is what is referred to as the ABC approach, an acronym for `abstention, be faithful, use a condom’ – a touching, Christian fundamentalist inspired, but almost entirely irrelevant way of treating AIDS. As the ABC approach glaringly suggests, PEPFAR is infused with Christian fundamentalist values.  In line with their skewed thinking, the program promotes `abstention’, prostitutes and homosexuals are excluded from treatment. Emphasizing abstention tends to focus on individual behavior modification for prevention, – as opposed to structural change, or some kind of hybrid approach or an approach which focuses on prevention. PEPFAR has resulted in a number of unintended consequences: the marginalization of groups at high risk for HIV/AIDS (LGBT, prostitutes, IV drug users, etc.); the promulgation of misunderstandings about HIV transmission, prevention and safe sex (condoms); the promulgation of misunderstandings about the causes of HIV/AIDS epidemic

By excluding those more likely to be affected by HIV/AIDS, PEPFAR is shooting itself in the foot.  The results have been – almost predictably – uneven. If HIV/AIDS levels in Uganda did dip in the early years of the program, their levels are once again on the rise. While some groups see (significantly) falling rates of HIV/AIDS prevalence, other groups see rates rising or unchanged (e.g. married women, LGBT community). In a similar vein, there is no real evidence that the credit for declining HIV prevalence where it exists, is as a result of the Bush program.

Taken from this article by Rob Prince

Woo-woo cures

Gambian dictator, Yahya Jammeh, continues to insist that he has a cure for HIV/AIDS. While people might think he is a lunatic and that his claims are bizzare and should be ignored, many sick people in Gambia take him seriously. They go to the state house to receive “free treatment"with no proof of efficacy or effectiveness from his ‘Excellency’.


Jammeh, who came to power in 1996 through a military coup, has repeatedly declared that he could cure HIV/AIDS and asthma using natural herbs with some banana and peanuts and by reciting prayers and some verses from the Koran. He has refused to reveal the ingredients he used in preparing some of the concoction. Jammeh had no medical training. He claimed to have inherited the “healing power” from his father. There is no evidence that Jammeh has inherited any form of healing power from anybody. He is a quack taking advantage of the situation of poverty, disease and poor medical care in his country. During his ‘healing session’, he carries a copy of the Koran and his muslim beads to attempt to give the process some legitimacy and credibility in the eyes of the majority muslim population in the country.

Jammeh’s cure claims have been dismissed by medical experts globally. And many people are particularly concerned that Jammeh’s reckless and irresponsible cure claims could undermine efforts to combat the AIDS pandemic in Gambia and in other parts of the region. It is difficult to know the number of people who must have died since Jammeh came out and started administering his unsubstantiated and quack cure claims.

Quote of the Day

"I fear poverty will kill me before HIV does"

"I have been swallowing ARVs for years now. I have followed all the instructions from the doctors. I have done everything I can to stay alive so that I can take care of my children, but it hurts me that even after I have tried to stave off AIDS-related death, another form of death awaits me. It is this house — this house will kill me sooner than I expect.”

The house in question slants and has a rusty, leaky roof. The eucalyptus poles holding the roof up are rotting, so a flour-like substance keeps falling off them on to the floor. The mud on the walls has fallen off, leaving the weak supporting poles bare. The house, which is now 10 years old, is likely to crumble any time. Whenever it rains, Nangendo folds her beddings to the side and watches in the dark as her troubles seep in from under the door. With its tiny windows, what is supposedly the sitting room is loaded with darkness. 

 “A small brick and sand house, for instance, even if it is one room, is all I want. I need help,” she pleads.

south africa's shame

More than half of South Africa's children live in poverty and one in four has HIV.  South Africa is now judged to be one of the most unequal societies in the world and its 19 million children bear the brunt of the disconnect.

The Unicef report found that 1.4 million children live in homes that rely on often dirty streams for drinking water, 1.5 million have no flushing lavatories and 1.7 million live in shacks, with no proper bedding, cooking or washing facilities.

Four in 10 live in homes where no one is employed and, in cases of dire poverty, the figure rises to seven in 10.

Contrary to the rest of Africa, where pneumonia and diarrhoea are the biggest child killers, South African children are most likely to die from HIV/Aids. More than five million are currently infected with HIV, and 40 per cent die from the pandemic annually.

Aida Girma, Unicef's South African representative, said that two thirds of child deaths were preventable with simple improvements in primary care for children.

Rhoda Kadalie, executive director of Impumelelo Social Innovations Centre which seeks out novel ways to tackle poverty, said the problem could be traced back to 1994, when the post-apartheid, ANC government focused on "the economy, black economic empowerment and the consolidation of power" rather than education and health care.These subjects are not sexy and those ministries are given to the weaker ministers who have little political power," she said. "As a result, we are awash with policies but there's no political will or competence at a local level to implement them. The facts speak for themselves: if we don't invest in our children now, we might as well give up on our future."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9280481/More-than-half-of-South-Africas-children-live-in-poverty.html

too little, too late

Of 22.9 million HIV positive people in sub-Saharan Africa, 5.6 million are South African, according to a recent UNAIDS report. But only 1.6 million HIV positive people in South Africa are on antiretrovirals (ARVs), the report said. This amounted to only 37 percent of those who should be on treatment, said Catherine Sozi, coordinator of UNAIDS in South Africa. "We need to put another 1.6 million onto treatment by 2015,"she said.

Botswana, Namibia and Rwanda have more than 80 percent of their eligible HIV-positive populations on ARVs. In Ethiopia, Kenya, Swaziland and Zambia between 60 percent and 79 percent are on ARVs, according to the report.

The Swiss company Lonza is to manufacture anti-retroviral drugs in South Africa in joint venture with the South African government, named Ketlaphela ["I will live or survive" in Sesotho], will establish the first plant to manufacture active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) for anti-retroviral medicines in South Africa.

It may mean cheaper HIV drugs but i does not mean FREE anti-retrovirals. Commerce still takes priority in capitalism

Praying for health and death

The newly appointed health minister, Dr Christine Ondoa Dradidi, since her appointment has promoted the claim advanced by Oyet’s Life Line Ministries, that HIV/AIDS can be cured through prayer. She told The Observer that prayer heals HIV/AIDS, and that she knows three people who were once positive but turned negative after prayer for deliverance.

“I am sure and I have evidence that someone who was positive turned negative after prayers,” Ondoa told The Observer , promising to ask colleagues in Arua hospital, where she once worked, to find the relevant documentation. She spoke of her time as a doctor in West Nile when she handled cases of people who claimed to be negative after ARV treatment and prayers “While there [West Nile], we did thorough testing and saw all documentation of three people who were once positive. We tested them in different laboratories and the results were negative,” .

Dr. Christine Ondoa as the new head of Uganda’s Ministry of Health. The position will give Ondoa authority over a significant portion of Uganda’s foreign HIV/AIDS mitigation funding, which in the year 2010 included over $270 million dollars from the United States. Along with her role as a medical professional, Christine Ondoa also serves as pastor in the Life Line Ministries of apostle Julius Peter Oyet, one of the most powerful clerics leading Uganda’s ongoing crusade against gay rights. Apostle Julius Oyet has stated that “even animals are wiser than homosexuals”, forthrightly declared that homosexuality should be a capital crime, and claimed to have co-authored the internationally condemned, so-called “kill the gays” bill–submitted in 2009 by a member of Oyet’s elite “College of Prayer” group in Parliament.

Pervasive Poverty in Swaziland

With a population of about 1.1 million, Swaziland has over 759 000 people living below the poverty line.48 per cent of the population lived on less than US $ 1 per day which translates to about E7.50 in local currency while 78 per cent lived below US $ 2 per day. The United Nations Complementary Country Analysis which was published in April this year blames this problem to the inequalities in the distribution of wealth in the country and the HIV/AIDS scourge where the country remains with the highest HIV prevalence in the world.

Income distribution remains skewed, with 56 per cent of wealth held by the richest 20 per cent of the population, while the poorest 20 per cent of the population owns less than 4.3 per cent.

HIV /AIDS translates to an estimated loss of 20 years of life expectancy in the country.

20-25 per cent of Swazi households are food insecure.

29 per cent of children under the age of five are showing signs of stunting which is an indication of malnutrition over an extended period.

The mortality rate has risen dramatically, with maternal mortality increasing from 229 deaths per 100 000 births in 1996 to 589 per 100 000 in 2006.

In Swaziland there is limited access to and control of productive assets such as land and water for sustainable livelihoods for the poor, and inadequate capacity to participate in policy making and decisions.The UN noted that physiological and social deprivation which includes risk, vulnerability, lack of autonomy, powerlessness and lack of respect was prevalent in the country.

Tea and sex

Tea accounts for about 20 percent of Kenya's gross domestic product and is one of its main exports.

"Tea pickers are paid very little and the working conditions in the farm can hardly be friendly; can you imagine waking up to face the cold weather and morning rain to pick tea without any protection?" asked Peter Obiero, an official at the Kenya Plantation and Agricultural Workers Union. "The houses they live in are also very tiny and can hardly contain a family with children; this forces most of them to leave their families in the rural areas..."

Underpaid and living in poor conditions far from home, tea pickers in Kenya's vast plantations are trying to boost their income by selling sex. Kenya's Rift Valley has a general HIV prevalence of seven percent .

Consolata Awuor, a single mother of two who works on a large tea farm, says her job as a tea picker does not bring in enough to pay her rent, feed and clothe her family, and pay her sons' school fees, so she moonlights as a sex worker in Kericho town."For us women, we get even less pay because we cannot pick as much tea leaves as the men," she said. "Together with a few friends, we have rented a tin room in town where we provide sex and sell alcohol ... most of our clients are our fellow tea workers."

Other tea workers like David Wanjala "When I came here seven years ago I brought my family with me, but I later realised I couldn't afford to keep them here; I took them back home and I now live alone...The money I am paid here is too little even for one person ... because of these frustrations, I used it to buy sex and alcohol. Sex is cheap here because even the women who work here are paid little and they use their bodies to get extra income."

Many large tea companies distribute condoms to employees and hold regular forums to educate them about HIV. One such company is Unilever Tea, one of Kenya's largest. But their concern is not a humanitarian one but simple cold economic facts.
"We realised that the company was losing tremendously due to high HIV prevalence amongst employees, especially those in the lower cadres, into which tea pickers fall," said Irene Cheruiyot, who runs the HIV programme. "Most employees living with the virus cannot be productive because of the toll it takes on their lives. If they pick less tea it means that the factory will have to operate at below optimum, so they will be forced to bring in more manpower, which leads to additional costs,"

HIV/AIDS worry businesses because the disease eats into their profits . But the simpler solution , remove the poverty conditions of their workforce that promote prostitution , would also eat into their profits - but more so .

South Africa - New policy on HIV/AIDS

South Africa's health minister promised a dramatic increase in treatment for AIDS victims to overcome the legacy of a decade of governmental denial of the epidemic.
Barbara Hogan said the government wanted to provide AIDS drugs to 1.5 million people over the next three years—up from 700,000 at present, conceding that thousands were without the treatment they desperately need.
South Africa has an estimated 5.7 million people infected with HIV—the most of any country in the world—and nearly 1,000 people die every day of AIDS-related diseases. But former President Thabo Mbeki and his health minister downplayed the crisis. Since 1996 life, expectancy in South Africa has fallen by 12 years, maternal mortality is higher than in Iraq, and three times more children under five die than in Brazil.

"We cannot let the economic crisis paralyze us," said Sidibe,head of UNAIDS . "Stimulus packages and economic adjustments should be made with a human face in mind. A mother should not have to choose between continuing AIDS treatment and feeding her children. We cannot let down the 4 million people on treatment and millions more in need today."

the cost of anti-science

A recent Harvard School of Public Health study said 330,000 deaths were caused by former South Africa's former President Thabo Mbeki South Africa's his 1999 decision to declare available drugs toxic and dangerous. Also as a result of Mr Mbeki's policies, nearly 35,000 babies were also born HIV-positive between 2000 and 2005. The study, led by Dr Pride Chigwedere, accused the South African government of "acting as a major obstacle in the provision of medication to patients with Aids".
The authors said that under the leadership of Mr Mbeki, the government had restricted use of donated anti-retroviral drugs and blocked funds for more than a year from the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

The idiocy of religion

The head of the Catholic Church in Mozambique has told the BBC he believes some European-made condoms are infected with the HIV virus deliberately.

Maputo Archbishop Francisco Chimoio claimed some anti-retroviral drugs were also infected "in order to finish quickly the African people".

"Condoms are not sure because I know that there are two countries in Europe, they are making condoms with the virus on purpose," he alleged, refusing to name the countries. "They want to finish with the African people. This is the programme. They want to colonise until up to now. If we are not careful we will finish in one century's time."

"We've been using condoms for years now, and we still find them safe," prominent Mozambican Aids activist Marcella Mahanjane told the BBC.
The UN says anti-retrovirals (ARVs) have proved very effective for treating people with Aids. The drugs are not a cure, but attack the virus on several fronts at once.

Gates and Aids

The Socialist Banner is no friend of Bill Gates and other capitalist philanthropists [ see here ]believing that only going to the root cause of Africa's problems will alleviate the poverty that exists - and that problem is capitalism , itself . But we do acknowledge that out of charity there can be some limited good , even if in this case it is bad news .

We now note that a $37 million 3 -year study funded by the Gates Foundation have found that women who used a latex diaphragm for possible protection against HIV had the same infection rates as those who did not. Researchers conclude that they cannot recommend use of a diaphragm as a low-cost intervention that women could use as a means of reducing their risk of HIV infection.
Researchers are desperately seeking a low-cost method that women could use -- without the consent of male partners -- to protect themselves against HIV. About 20 percent of adults are infected in Zimbabwe and South Africa, where the experiment was conducted, and women there run twice the risk of infection as men. In cultures where women are traditionally subservient to men, they have less of a say about matters of sex -- when to have it, whom to have it with, and whether condoms or other safer sexual practices will be used.

The study was conducted in Durban and Johannesburg, South Africa, and in Harare, Zimbabwe. It enrolled nearly 5,000 women ages 18-49 and followed them an average of 18 months. Half of the women were given diaphragms and a gel lubricant, while the other half were not. Both groups were also given condoms and extensive counseling to have their partners use them.
By the end of the study, HIV infection rates were high and almost identical .

The G-8 Pledge

The head-lines claim the G8 are pledged to spend $60bn (£30bn) over the next few years on HIV/Aids, malaria and TB . Worldwide, these diseases claim more than six million lives every year, with the threat particularly acute in Africa. About 63% of all people in the world infected with HIV live in Africa, while malaria is one of the leading causes of death in children in Africa. The $30bn recently pledged by the US for HIV/AIDS treatment over the next five years will be matched by a similar sum from the other G8 countries.

Let us ignore the politicians praises for themselves and quote those on the ground .

Aditi Sharma, Action Aid's head of HIV/Aids campaign, said: "Even this $60bn smokescreen can't cover up for the abject failure of the G8 to move forward on their Aids promises. What we came here for was a comprehensive funding plan. Instead in the last few days the G8 have diluted their commitment to universal access."

"... this represents a cap on ambition that will ultimately cost millions more lives," said Steve Cockburn of the Stop Aids Campaign.

"...the reaffirmation at Heiligendamm of the Gleneagles pledges lack credibility.There is no reason to think that these targets will be any easier to achieve in the three remaining years before 2010." said George Gelber, head of policy at Cafod, the Catholic development group.

Matt Phillips, of Save the Children, said: "The G8 leaders have not delivered a concrete plan for tackling the crushing levels of African poverty. Today's deal was warm in words but that's cold comfort for the millions of African children who will continue to die through the lack of free healthcare"

and from others

Patrick Watt, an analyst for ActionAid, said: "Effectively the G8 can meet today's commitment by treading water. There has been a massaging down of expectations since Gleneagles."

"This summit outcomes document isn't readable in any language," said Bob Geldof "It's called a communique but it seems to have been deliberately designed not to communicate the real facts. Do they think we can't read or count? We are looking for accountable language and accountable numbers. We didn't get them today."

Bono said in a statement that the G8 countries had to lay out "clear year-by-year steps" as to how the promised aid would appear. "But this labyrinthine language offers no path -- it's a maze designed to lose an ever-increasing movement of engaged global citizenry. ..The bureababble reveals a struggle within the G8... "

We in the World Socialist Movement have news for Geldof and Bono . Of course , the Capitalist class disguise the truth with small print . They have had Sirs Bob and Bono so fooled with their propaganda and promises that those two have been touching the forelock to Bush and Blair like a pair of court minstrels and jesters .
Geldof and Bono never stop going on about giving more money and this feeds the illusion that without money we have no way to provide for the things we need.
This leaves us separated from our powers of action. It ignores the fact that productive resources are not money but labour, land, industry, manufacture, transport and communications.
The problems of world poverty , and in particular in Africa , require that these should be liberated from the economic constraints of money and the profit system. Such a socialist world would be able to stop people dying from hunger immediately and rapidly increase world food production to reach a point where every person on the planet would have free access to sufficient good quality food to maintain good health.

Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Being "on the game" is a Western euphemism that insults as well as harms. It insults because prostitution is hard and unpleasant and often dangerous work. It harms because society punishes those who sell their bodies outside marriage. Prostitution is no "game". Nonetheless, the euphemism is useful in that it reveals the usual contempt with which prostitutes are viewed and the consequent lack of provision for their specific needs, and for the needs of women in general.

In Western society prostitutes have formed unions and have taken to the streets to protest against the cynical morality of those who condone marriage of convenience but balk at their more straightforward counterpart.

In Eritrea, traditional attitudes towards unregulated sex are uncompromising; sex outside marriage is "prostitution" and the reaction to this societal threat is ostracism of the woman. The language reflects this with implacable bluntness; "Shermuta", "Menzra" and "Meamen" are all terms for "Whore". And they mean just that.

Before the 1998 war between Eritrea and Ethiopia, a survey by the Social Affair Authority (SAA) showed that the number of Eritrean and Ethiopian working girls in Asmara and other cities were almost equal. After the expulsion of all Ethiopian women who used to work in bars and hotels, the majority of prostitutes who work in the cities now are Eritreans.

Prevailing economic conditions as well as the inevitable changes arising from the growth of urban heterogeneity mean that the proportion of Eritrean prostitutes is rising. Sexual mores are changing among young people. The equation between extra-marital sex and prostitution means that losing her virginity makes a girl unmarriageable, and an outcast from her community. Lacking the educational qualifications necessary for work in the city, the girl may find employment in a bar where peer and financial pressures lead her to take the only immediate option for survival.

Girls as young as 16 years old are entering into Asmara, Keren and Massawa, from rural areas, and almost all who do become prostitutes. A lot of them support their families without telling them where the money is coming from. Some of them want to do it for a little time and then do something else, get married and have kids - the same dreams and aspirations as other women. But, no one gets a clean slate around the corner street of Asmara.

According to the Ministry of Health’s policy, every bar owner in Asmara and other cities and towns is required to register the prostitutes working from their premises. But fear of disclosure means that women try to avoid giving their names or operate from private, in unlicensed places called "Segretos". And pimps are unlikely to step forward and admit the source of their income.
Anonymity may save a woman from censure, but it makes her vulnerable to STD and AIDS. Although AIDS awareness among the known prostitutes is high, no survey has been conducted among other women who sell their body for quick cash in secret without the knowledge of their partners. Married women are ashamed to visit a clinic for a check-up in case they are spotted by someone who knows them.

Being "on the game" is not for a laugh; in the market economy, selling your body for sex is a form of wage slavery - exchanging the commodity you have (ie. Sex) for the one you don’t (money). There is also an ideological undertow dragged along in the wake of this modish new sex trade, the one about control of one’s own body. To sell yourself for sex, and be okay with, it is in the same league as tattooing or piercing your body.

The vast majority of those who enter into the sex trade have no control of their lives let alone their bodies. They do not have any other means of income except to trade sex for money.

Why should society criminalise these prostitutes? It is all hypocrisy. Those who campaigns for family values seem not to realise that marriage itself is but state-licenced prostitution. As members of the working class, who have nothing to sell but their labour power, prostitutes sell sexual satisfaction to male buyers. On the other hand, many women enter into marriage for little more than the financial security it offers.

In order to survive, to eat, to buy some clothes, it is tempting to accept the offer of the pimp who tells the young woman that she will be provided with security as an employee. Under the present social system if you are a member of the working class you need to sell what you possess, your mental and physical energies, to whomever will make a purchase. In many societies this is not just earning a little extra cash, but the very means of survival. They call it the oldest profession in the world. Indeed it is – it has been around since the birth of class society.

Michael Ghebre
African Socialist 5