Social Marketing in the News
{More news and commentary is available at the On Social Marketing and Social Change blog]
Ugandans Resist Anti-Condom Agenda
In an open letter to the Ugandan Minister of Health posted by Human Rights Watch, over 100 Ugandans and other individuals and organizations are protesting the removal of the only free condoms that were distributed in Uganda, and call for the stop of programs that focus solely on abstinence-only messages… the historical record of Uganda’s success in reducing HIV is being distorted to further ideological agendas. Since 2003, we have watched as the Ugandan government downplays its own proven track record in an obvious attempt to please international donors such as the United States. We have watched as our own leaders rewrite history and misleadingly attribute reduced HIV prevalence to adoption of sexual abstinence.
Over the past year, access to condoms in Uganda has been reduced dramatically. In late 2004, the government of Uganda issued a nationwide recall of Engabu condoms claiming these were defective, and causing a catastrophic shortage of the only condoms previously made freely available in government health clinics. At the same time, the government placed onerous new taxes and quality-testing requirements on all condoms imported for social marketing and for sale on the private market. This in turn led to price increases of more than 500 percent for condoms imported for these purposes, effectively eliminating the only other sources of affordable condoms in the country.
We condemn the diversion of valuable HIV/AIDS funds away from programs that provide a full range of HIV-prevention options and toward those that focus exclusively on abstinence and fidelity for HIV-prevention. We believe such approaches are not only unrealistic and scientifically unsupportable, but also threaten the lives of millions sexually active adults and young people, including married people, sero-discordant couples, and women in polygamous marriages. We also believe that such programs may have other unintended consequences, such as reinforcing early marriage and child marriage in keeping with an obsession with virginity.
We further condemn the false morality under which these shifts are being made. At a time when public rhetoric about faith, religion, and morality is at a fever pitch, the dramatic shift toward abstinence-only programs needlessly threatens the lives of millions of Ugandans now at risk of HIV infection and re-infection.
The letter outlines six steps the government should immediately take to address the issues embedded in HIV/AIDS prevention programs in the country, and “do not rule out” legal action if action does not happen by the end of this month.
Internationally Funded Project Promotes Increased Condom Use
The Regional Social Marketing Programme for HIV/AIDS Prevention...is expected to strengthen and complement existing HIV/ AIDS prevention activities in the Caribbean and support the HIV/AIDS plans of participating countries. Social marketing is defined as using commercial marketing techniques to encourage healthy behaviours through the use of products and services.
To achieve its goals, PSI will develop partnerships with distributors to ensure widespread access to, as well as, the promotion of condoms, and expand distribution to non-traditional outlets that could provide access to patrons of high risk areas such as bars, clubs, and hotels.
In addition, point-of-sale visibility will be increased, and a condom tracking system will be introduced to study the overall growth in the condom market.
In order to decrease barriers to consistent condom use, a mass media campaign will be launched and educational materials introduced. Moreover, high risk populations such as sexually active youth, commercial sex workers (CSW), men who have sex with men (MSM), and tourists will be targeted by peer/ health educators in order to enhance local capacity for sustainable HIV/AIDS prevention.
Can We End Global Poverty?
Economist Jeffrey Sachs at the Council on Foreign Relations moderated by John Cassidy
The biggest myth...in our country is how much aid we give and how much has gone down the drain. This is what I confront every day, many times a day from hate mail, to questions, and so forth. Let me just run through, if I could, what we actually do for Africa.
The U.S. aid to Africa is $3 billion this year. That $3 billion is roughly divided into three parts: The first is emergency food shipments. Of the billion or so in emergency food shipments, half of that, roughly $500 million, is just transport costs. So the commodities are maybe half a billion dollars. That’s not development assistance, that’s emergency relief. The second billion is the AIDS program, now standing at about $1 billion. That, on the whole, is a good thing. I would call it a real program. It’s providing commodities; it’s providing relief. It started late and it’s too small, but it’s there. The third billion is everything else we do for child survival, maternal survival, family planning, roads, power, water and sanitation, malaria; everything is the third $1 billion. Most of that, approaching 80 percent, is actually American consultant salaries. There’s almost no delivery of commodities, for example. There’s essentially zero financing to help a country build a school or build a clinic or dig a well.
When you get down to it, the actual financing we provide to help Africans invest in their future is well under $1 per African per year. Then, the politicians say—as George Bush did yesterday—we give so much money and it’s misused; we won’t let that happen. The fact is we put in almost no funding, and it accomplishes almost nothing. And then we bemoan the waste. I don’t know how to break through that misunderstanding. That’s what I’ve been trying to do for many years, but it’s very, very powerful in this country.
Malaria will kill 3 million people this year. It’s utterly preventable. It’s 100 percent treatable. It will kill 3 million children. It’s really something to see a child dying of malaria. I’ve seen a lot of them in the last year dying of malaria. It’s the most useless, ridiculous thing in the world, because a pill in the right time would save them, and because every child that I saw dying of malaria had not had the benefit of a $7 bed net.
The United States has not seen fit to give away bed nets. It’s seen fit to advertise the sale of bed nets in what’s called social marketing. And what you saw in that article last week, if you caught it, was that we spend all our malaria budget on advertising in Africa rather than giving away bed nets. Our total spending on malaria is $90 million a year. In other words, 25 cents per American. This is not commensurate with a disease which will kill 3 million children, nor is it right to spend the $90 million with $60 million of it being in advertising as opposed to delivery of services.
6:40:43 PM 
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