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HIV/AIDS
The hope
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A new mother in Rwanda takes a drug that can reduce the risk of transmitting HIV to her baby. A homeless boy in Vietnam, addicted to heroin, takes advantage of a needle exchange program. A Tanzanian sex worker convinces her HIV-positive client to use a condom. Young people in the Ukraine educate each other about HIV/AIDS through theatre, dance and music. A young father in Mozambique takes antiretroviral drugs that make him feel well enough to be able to provide for his family.
These are some of the signs of hope in the global battle against HIV/AIDS.
Canada is very much a part of that global battle. We are playing a leading role on many fronts to help stop and reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS and to help those already infected live longer lives—enabling them to raise their families and contribute to the progress of their communities.
The reality
Sex workers in Nairobi's Kibera Slum in
Kenya learn how to use a condom correctly.
They are also trained to promote AIDS
awareness among their colleagues and
clients and are assisted in finding other jobs.
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Lack of education, poor nutrition and inadequate health care—all linked with extreme poverty—make the poorest people in the poorest countries most vulnerable to HIV/AIDS.
When parents, teachers, farmers, construction workers, entrepreneurs, nurses, and leaders are dying by the thousands every year, then families, communities and countries stop working. Children struggle to look after families, working or begging to earn a living, with no time for school. Fields are left uncultivated because people are too sick to work them. Businesses and basic services are disrupted, economies suffer, communities fall apart.
HIV/AIDS is making it impossible for people to lift themselves out of poverty, improve their basic living conditions, and escape their vulnerability to disease. Stopping the spread of HIV/AIDS and helping those already infected to live longer, better lives is indispensable to fighting poverty and contributing to sustainable development in the world's poorest countries.
The numbers: Worldwide in 2005, 40.3 million people are living with HIV. More than 25 million of them are in sub-Saharan Africa and 10 million of them are young people aged 15 to 24. Some 15 million children have already been orphaned by HIV/AIDS. Women are twice as likely as men to become infected by having sex.
The international vision
Students in an anti-AIDS club at the Kabanawa
High School in Zambia discuss
issues such as sexuality and how to
protect themselves against sexually
transmitted diseases. They also
participate in singing, dancing and
role-playing about reproductive health.
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In 2000, world leaders agreed to the Millennium Development Goals, an ambitious agenda to promote sustainable human development in all countries. One of the goals is to combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases that stand in the way of development. For HIV/AIDS, the target is to halt and begin to reverse its spread by 2015. Reducing poverty and hunger, improving education, and promoting gender equality—which are some of the other Millennium Development Goals—are crucial to achieving the HIV/AIDS target. Similarly, reversing the spread of HIV/AIDS is crucial to achieving the other Millennium Development Goals.
The global community has also agreed to focus efforts on sub-Saharan Africa where poverty, and therefore the scale of the HIV/AIDS crisis, is greatest.
Canada’s strategy on HIV/AIDS
Canada is playing a strategic leadership role internationally by:
chairing the governing body of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) from 2004 to 2005. UNAIDS, the main advocate for global action on the HIV/AIDS pandemic, plays a coordinating role in bringing together the efforts and resources of all sectors and partners—from government to civil society and the private sector—in the fight against HIV/AIDS.
assuming a seat on the Board of the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria; and
hosting the XVI International AIDS conference in Toronto in 2006.
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Canada is the first country in the world to implement the August 30, 2003, decision of the World Trade Organization to make less expensive versions of patented medicines available to developing countries facing public health problems. Bill C-9 or the Jean Chrétien Pledge to Africa Act is an example of how changing the way we do things in our own country can make a big difference for people in developing countries.
CIDA works in coordination and partnership with multilateral organizations, other donors, developing countries and civil society. We take a comprehensive approach to fighting HIV/AIDS, working concurrently on:
- preventing HIV/AIDS through education, including on sexual and reproductive health, culturally attuned awareness-raising initiatives, and vaccine and microbicide research;
- caring, treating and supporting those living with and affected by HIV/AIDS to enable them to live longer and better lives; and
- strengthening health systems and building human resource capacity in developing countries to fight HIV/AIDS.
For example:
- Canada supports the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, a partnership between governments, civil society, the private sector and affected communities to scale up resources to support new and existing initiatives to fight these diseases, which are killing more than 6 million people each year. Canada's total commitment to the Global Fund to date is nearly $550 million, including a commitment of $250 million for the replenishment period 2006-2007 announced in September 2005.
- Canada is the leading donor of the WHO's 3 by 5 initiative, a strategy that aims at enabling access for 3 million people with HIV/AIDS to antiretroviral (ARV) drugs by the end of 2005. When the initiative was announced, 5 to 6 million people infected with HIV in the developing world needed immediate access to ARV therapy to survive. ARVs can dramatically reduce death rates, prolong lives and improve quality of life for those living with HIV/AIDS. The 3 by 5 initiative provides front-end technical assistance, helping to ensure that developing countries can build health systems to treat large numbers of people as well as make it possible for other initiatives, such as Bill C-9 and the Global Fund, to work most effectively. At the recent G8 Gleneagles Summit, Canada and other G8 leaders agreed to develop and implement a package of HIV prevention, treatment and care with the aim of as close as possible to universal access for treatment for all those who need it by 2010.
- Canada supports the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative and the African AIDS Vaccine Programme in their efforts to develop a preventive vaccine for HIV/AIDS. Canada also supports the International Partnership for Microbicides to support innovative approaches that protect women and girls from HIV with measures they themselves can control.
- Canada helps to build health care capacity in developing countries by supporting country-led strategies to train health care providers, establish systems for drug procurement, and monitor and evaluate HIV/AIDS programs. Canada is, for example, providing training in developing countries—which will soon have access to lower-cost Canadian ARV generic drugs— on how to obtain, ship, store and distribute the HIV/AIDS treatment drugs.
- The XVI International AIDS Conference will be taking place in Toronto from August 13 to 18, 2006. It is anticipated that this Conference will attract close to 20,000 participants from all over the world. The Conference provides a unique forum for interaction of science, community and leadership with the goal of affecting change in the global response to HIV/AIDS. CIDA is supporting this important forum with $1.5 million in funding for scholarships for developing-country participants, pre-Conference and Conference activities with partners, and to the Global Village.
CIDA is using its resources efficiently and effectively: by integrating HIV/AIDS issues into all of its programming in Africa; by building on what works and sharing lessons and experiences; by focusing resources on hard-hit countries—such as South Africa, Mozambique and Tanzania; and by supporting innovative initiatives.
Find out more
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