Global Citizens for Change: 4 Steps for Canada re. the AIDS crisis
I came across a post-card/brochure in an HIV clinic today from Global Citizens for Change which I would urge you to support by downloading an action kit.
The postcard, addressed to the Prime Minister, reads as follows:
Dear Prime Minister,
Millions of people in developing countries are dying without access to AIDS medicines, and global HIV prevention efforts are lagging far behind what is needed. Canada and other G8 nations pledged to support HIV prevention and to strive for universal access to HIV/AIDS treatment by 2010.
Canadians, like me, want our government to do its part. I am asking that Canada:
-pay our fair share of the global response, by doubling current funding for research into anti-HIV vaccines and microbicides, contributing 5% of what is needed by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria for each of the next five years until 2010, and setting a timetable for raising our other aid contributions to the international target of 0.7% of gross national income;
-invest in public health care systems in developing countries. including supporting their efforts to train and retain desperately needed health care workers;
-promote immediate and unconditional cancellation of 100% of the debt burden of the countries most burdened by AIDS and poverty; and
-remove red tape in Canada’s law on exporting lower-cost medicines, while working with generic drug-makers and developing countries to improve access to needed drugs.
You could also email this message to the Prime Minister. < pm@pm.gc.ca>
While this is a Canadian web-site I urge readers from elsewhere, and I particularly mean the wealthiest nations, to advocate similarly wherever you live.
