Pot loads of cash .... Thank you Mr Buffett

Warren Buffet. What a very lovely man.

Many of you may have heard - Mr Buffet, multi-gazillionaire, owner of Berkshire Hathaway (and hence half the world .... including a good part of Tescos, McDonalds, Coke etc) .... and apparently stock-market investor to God .... has donated almost all his personal fortune to charity .... the great bulk of which will be given to the Gates Foundation and its fight for improved global health and education. Apparently he and Bill play bridge together ...

The exact amount varies according to who you read ... and will definitely vary long term since it's all stocks/shares related ... but essentially its estimated at somewhere between $30 and 40 billion on current valuations.

On of the largest donations ever made by an individual.

In addition he has given several billion to other eponymous charities - which are pro-choice and promote family planning.

And his generosity in one fell swoop elevates the Gates Foundation into being the wealthiest and probaly the most influential player in the game of international health .... not least due to the fact that the charity must spend the amount donated per year within that year .... essentially they must give away over $ 1.5 billion a year .... greater than the GDP of a good few African nations ....

As I have alluded to before - Bill Gates is thankfully unencumbered by ideological chains .... but it is worrisome that the alpha male funding body of the international health world is entirely subject to one man and his wife's idiosyncrasies. It is rather ironically - very unhealthy.

Now I don't want to post yet another polemic about a funding source .... but it does make you think about the role of traditional multilateral funding organisations, and the rise of such personal foundations to fill the gaps.

Perhaps this is inevitable after the self-interested and bungled development packages of the 70s, 80s and 90s. Mistrust is high. At least with such charities - to a greater degree - what you see is what you get .... and the fewer strata you have to deal with ... the less opportunity for "leakage" and the more for accountability. But .... it is worrisome if we keep having to rely on the Bill Gates and Warren Buffetts of this world ...

ABC .... easy as 123?

Last week - I attended the PEPFAR (President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) annual conference (in Durban - so - sadly no sexy international business trip for me) .... an event showcasing the achievements so far in fighting the AIDS pandemic in the 16 recipient countries.

PEPFAR (as many of you already know) is the US initiative established by President George Bush in 2003 .... pledging $15 billion over 5 years to a global crusade against HIV/AIDS ..... in essence the largest amount ever pledged by a single country to combat a single disease .... thereby making it one of the most influential programmes in international health today .... (as well as funding my own current employment - thank you Uncle George) .... for more background info - check - http://www.avert.org/pepfar.htm

There are of course a myriad of reasons why President Bush would choose not to put this huge bolus of cash into a multilateral organisation such as the Global Fund - not least the ability to stipulate branded drugs and accommodate the interests of Big Pharma .... and it certainly allows him to state that the American People have put 560,000 people on ARV treatment within 3 years and enabled testing for many millions more .... as well as helping to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV to four million women .... which no one can deny is a monumentous achievement .....

But perhaps the most controversial reason is the ideological motivation behind the ruling that PEPFAR funds must be divided as follows:

1. 55% for the treatment of individuals with HIV/AIDS
   
2. 15% for the palliative care of individuals with HIV/AIDS
3. 20% for HIV/AIDS prevention (of which at least 33% is to be spent on abstinence until marriage programs)
4. 10% for helping orphans and vulnerable children

Now most of us have heard of the ABC approach to preventing HIV (Abstinence/delay having sex, Be faithful and Condomise) ....

But PEPFAR has developed its own definitions for ABC ..... namely Abstinence for youths until marriage, Be faithful in marriage/monogamous relationship and Condoms for those who practise high risk sex ..... (and all this on a background of the global gag rule and the prostitution loyalty oath)

And so - many PEPFAR-funded prevention programmes are limited to providing condoms only for "high risk groups" .... and the only message available for young people is that of abstinence until marriage .... and this in countries where the reality is that kids start having sex in their early teens because there is little else to do .... where early sex is often violent .... and where young girls have little choice or decision-making capacity over what happens to their own bodies ....

In addition - whilst the guidelines insist that a third of all the prevention money is spent solely on promoting A and B .... the reporting system for ALL the PEPFAR prevention programmes (well - in South Africa at least) requires them to submit stats only on their A/B achievements (but not C) .... so even if you do distribute/preach condoms .... you're not given any credit for it ..... and there's no incentive to really make an effort to provide them .... given that A/B targets are the only results that will get you refunded ....

The EU on World AIDS Day 2005 openly distanced themselves from this policy .... advocating instead for a comprehensive approach to prevention and treatment ..... and the GAO reported earlier this year .... that some countries receiving PEPFAR money had needed to divert resources from efforts to prevent mother's transmitting the virus to their children and for ensuring clean blood banks .... in order to meet such A/B targets set for them .......

The Lancet published an editorial accusing PEPFAR of being " ill-informed and ideologically driven" .... noting that almost a quarter of such US funding was being chanelled through faith-based organisations .... and concluded that "Many more lives will be saved if condom use is heavily promoted alongside messages to abstain and be faithful".

And yet .... some organisations still believe that PEPFAR's efforts to influence the HIV world are not profound enough ..... "Casting the first stone: the US Christian right’s war on the Global Fund"

So obviously ..... this has formed the basis of many a wine-fuelled-late-night-indignant discussion here ..... but surrounded as i am by liberal heart-bleeding ngo types .... i was taken aback when asked by a friend that ..... given this current american administration was elected not once but twice - then why can't the US spend its dollars in a manner that its citizens would approve of, advocate for and most importantly vote for?

Indeed at the end of the day .... if we ignore the prevention agenda .... PEPFAR has proved incredibly successful in rapidly putting people on treatment .... often in creative and innovative ways .... and so ..... whilst it calls into question the motivations behind such donor aid (should the US be allowed decide who can use a condom or not - even if sex is the major cause of HIV spreading?) .... realistically this is the nature of development ..... and we will have to weigh up how nefarious it really is to use such bilateral aid agreements to ensure the success of our own pharma companies or religious organisations ..... as long as the job gets done - especially when no one else is putting up the cash ....

Lets just be thankful that Bill Gates thinks that religion isn't time efficient ....

A genius in the rough ....

In the process of setting up this blog ... i read loads and loads of others .... and i know that blogs are all a bit old hat now .... and most are dreadfully egotistical .... and all too few are even interesting .... but then you come across an absolute corker ....

I can't take credit for really knowing this guy .... he's a friend of a friend of shashank's .... and i've met him just once .... but i find myself shamelessly looking forward to his new posts ....

"In high school, I did not have a fancy car. While most kids were rocking new Mercedes and BMWs, I got an 1980 4 door Volvo. My crew and I used to “roll” down Old Pasadena in this clunker. Because I did not have a CD player, my boy would bring his boombox in the car, and we would rock that. Take a second and just imagine 4 dorky Indians with fresh fades rolling in this clunker. Our night would end typically when the batteries ran out. I wish I was kidding, but it is a true story."

You can't learn to write like that .... he's a natural .... Shashank is right - someone needs to get him a book deal ..... http://ogspice.blogspot.com/

The important stuff ....

A good mate of mine from school replied to my email announcing this blog to say ... "The idea of a blog is great, v. educational, worthwhile etc .... and it looks v. professional too ..... but where's the space where we can just chat normally about the important stuff and life in general?"

And she's right .... so if all my intentions go awry .... and this turns into some horribly boringly worthy blogspot for my constant navel-gazing .... then send me many comment-slaps to put me in my place .... although really .... anyone who uses this many ellipses ... can never be taken too seriously ....

And so - I do want to send out huge and happy congratulations to my lovely friend Katherine and her brand-spanking-new fiance Greg .... and to all my mates getting married this month whose weddings i'm so gutted to be missing .... Pooja T .... Harsh and Sneha .... and my wonderful friend Andrew and Bernadette .... perhaps some of you might consider Cape Town for a honeymoon?

Thirty years on .....

If you can ever say that one day could change a nation's history .... then for South Africa .... thirty years ago today may have been such a turning point. On June 16th 1976 thousands of schoolchildren in Soweto (a township on the outskirts of Johannesburg) staged a protest against being forced to learn Afrikaans, the shamefully poor standards of "Bantu" education and against the oppression of apartheid.

Tragically the protesting children were met with with the wrath and firepower of the South African Police - and the ensuing bloodbath spawned furious and violent unrest in townships across the country.

It was the first major protest since the 1950s and 60s when leaders such as Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo had been imprisoned or exiled ..... after which the white National Party had ruled more or less unchecked with their policy of apartheid and white supremacy. But by the mid 1970s .... the spirit of revolution had again started to foment ....

One of the most iconic photographs of the past half century shows the brutality of the response to the uprising: 12 year old Hector Pieterson, one of the first children to be killed that day, lying dead in the arms of an anguished schoolboy with his sister running horrified alongside.

Mbuyisa Makhubo, the boy who picked Hector up, like many of the other protestors went into exile afterwards due to police harrassment. Some of these young people from the townships then went onto train as guerillas in other countries such as Angola and Zimbabwe to fight a covert war against the apartheid regime .... some fled to study in foreign universities and then came back in 1994 to lead the freed country .... others died in mysterious circumstances .... and Makhumbo like far too many others .... just disappeared - South Africa's lost generation remembered today on Youth Day.

The student protests of 1976 lit the spark of a freedom struggle .... that threw up many now famous leaders such as Steve Biko, Walter Sisulu and Ahmed Kathrada ..... and culminated in the historic free and democratic elections in 1994, catapulting the African National Congress and Nelson Mandela into power.

The photograph of Hector Pieterson .... published across the world .... finally revealed the horrors of what was happening at the time in South Africa to a doubting international community. It resulted in sanctions, censure and widespread movements pressurising the apartheid regime to free its political prisoners and allow mutiracial elections. Hector Pieterson's sister, shown in the picture, has been widely quoted in the press here on the consequences of photo, the protest and his death: "I was a nobody, Hector was a nobody. What it proves is that you don't have to be famous to change the lives of other people."