THAILAND: Former prisoner 46664 may have announced his withdrawal from public engagements but he came out fighting on two fronts yesterday as he urged greater donor support to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria and declared that not enough was being done to tackle TB in the context of the AIDS pandemic.
Mr Nelson Mandela spoke to an adoring crowd of several thousand last night when he went on stage at the International AIDS Conference in Bangkok to promote his Foundation's 46664 global campaign to raise awareness and funds for the AIDS pandemic.
"My prison number on Robben Island was 46664. Despite the efforts of the apartheid regime to reduce us to prison numbers and so reduce our humanity, the world did not forget. Today, I call upon all of you - every global citizen - not to forget. We must seize this opportunity to demonstrate that we share a common humanity and that it matters who my sister or brother is. We must never reduce the issue to statistics," he said.
As a former prisoner, he had a special place in his heart for all those denied their basic human rights and he called for special attention for marginalised populations "such as refugees, intravenous drug users, prisoners and sex workers".
The 46664 campaign "will continue to focus on creating more global awareness; advocating for and supporting care, treatment and prevention; and intensifying our efforts to raise the urgently needed funds".
He called for greater commitment and leadership from all sectors of society and praised the announcement by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation of an additional $50 million donation to the global fund and challenged "everyone to fund the fund now".
Mr Mandela also put his prison experience to good use earlier in the day when he made a surprise appearance at a press conference to support renewed efforts to tackle TB which is the main killer of people with HIV, accounting for up to one-third of all HIV/AIDS deaths world-wide. Some 8,000 adults and children die of AIDS every day.
He recalled how he contracted TB during his 18 years as a prisoner on Robben Island but once he was diagnosed, it took just four months to cure him. "TB is too often a death sentence for people living with AIDS. It does not have to be this way. We have known how to cure TB for more than 50 years. What we have lacked is the will and the resources to quickly diagnose people with TB and get them the treatment they need," he said.
Mr Mandela also congratulated the Gates Foundation for making $44.7 million available to support the new Consortium to Respond Effectively to the AIDS-TB Epidemic which will conduct research into strategies to control TB in communities with high HIV infection rates.
Dr Jack Chow who heads WHO's treatment programme said 70 per cent of TB patients are HIV positive. "We should not treat these two diseases separately. TB has to be part of the HIV agenda just as HIV needs to be part of the TB agenda," he said as he announced that the WHO is setting up a new TB/HIV unit.
Concern was expressed at the conference that the success of the activist campaign around mobilising support for access to anti-retrovirals has left aside the fact that TB is preventable, treatable and curable.
Dr Tim France, director of the Irish NGO Health Development Networks, said TB treatment, at a cost of just $10 dollars for a full course, can extend the lives of millions of people who would otherwise die before they get access to anti-retrovirals.
"Just 450,000 people in the developing world have access to antiretrovirals at present and the estimated need is for six million people. It's obvious that we need a strategy to extend people's lives and treat them for opportunistic infections like TB until such time as there is universal access to anti-retroviral therapy," he said.