Tag: UNAIDS

UNAIDS to admit it overstated cases …

… now when will the UN admit that the Millennium Development Goals (MDG, for short) are also the Emperor’s New Clothes, and utterly unverifiable either when they were stated at the millennium in 2000, or when they are supposed to be achieved, in 2015? How could the UN know how many people worldwide live on one dollar per day? And how will the UN know if and when this number is cut in half? Of course it is worth trying to improve peoples’ lives around the plane — but it is ridiculous to mount a big public information campaign based on such evangelical and unknowable nonsense. And it will be worse if the UN just tries to claim victory in a few years’ time.

The NY Times is reporting today that “The United Nations’ AIDS-fighting agency plans to issue a report today acknowledging that it overestimated the size of the epidemic and that new infections with the deadly virus have been dropping each year since they peaked in the late 1990s. The agency, UNAIDS, will lower the number of people it believes are infected worldwide, to 33.2 million from the 39.5 million it estimated late last year”. [Of course, that’s still a lot — but it’s also still just an estimate…]

The NYTimes article says that “The statistical changes reflect more accurate surveys, particularly in India and some populous African countries. Some epidemiologists have criticized for years the way estimates were made, and new surveys of thousands of households in several countries have borne them out. In only a few countries, such as Kenya and Zimbabwe, do the figures reflect widespread behavioral changes, such as decisions by many people to have sex with fewer partners. Excerpts from the report were given to the news media in advance for release this evening, but an embargo on it was broken by other news organizations. Despite the revised estimates, the epidemic remains one of the great scourges of mankind”

The NYTimes reports that “Although new infections have dropped, the number of people with the disease is growing because more people infected with H.I.V. are living longer, thanks to antiretroviral drugs. With the world’s population growing, the agency believes that the percentage of adults who re now infected remains roughly constant, at about 0.8 percent. ‘This is not a surprise’, said Daniel Halperin, an expert on H.I.V. infection rates at the Harvard School of Public Health and co-author of an article published three years ago arguing that estimates of infection rates were too high. [At least, it’s not a surprise to him.] ‘The writing was on the wall years ago’, he said. ‘But’, he added, ‘this doesn’t mean the epidemic is going away, everything is fine and now forget about it — not at all. There are still about 10 countries in southern Africa that are real nightmares’.”

But — as with most UN campaigns — the real aim was to get the donors to respond, and this is the fear now, the NYTimes reports: “In the past, global health officials have treated the epidemic as a cyclone spiraling ever upward with no end to new infections in sight. But better surveys, particularly a household survey in India, have driven the figures down. Until recently, most national estimates were made by giving anonymous blood tests to some young women who came into public health clinics because they were pregnant or feared they had a sexually transmitted disease; those results were expanded with statistical models. But epidemiologists have realized that such a method — usually applied in big urban clinics because it was more efficient — oversampled prostitutes, drug abusers and people with multiple partners, and ignored rural women. Then the statistical extrapolations exaggerated those errors … AIDS advocates fear that any suggestion that the epidemic is lessening in intensity will cause fatigued donors to contribute less. In September, for example, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis received pledges of only $9.7 billion, well short of the $15 billion to $18 billion it had hoped to raise…”

The NYTimes article reporting that UNAIDS is about to revise its figures is here.

It's easy to dupe donors

The Los Angeles Times is reporting today that the United Nations was among potential donors duped by a donor-savvy woman called “the Angel of Soweto”, who established a private school, the Ithuteng Trust, for pupils who, she told donors, were orphans. But, the paper says, the woman, who ran her school on a philosophy of “tough love”, is no angel, according to some of her former students.

The article, written by the LA Times’ Robyn Dixon, reports that “students called her Mama Jackey and sang gospel-style hymns in her praise. The 100% high school graduation rate that her private school claimed impressed many, including former President Nelson Mandela, Oprah Winfrey and the makers of a documentary scheduled to air on HBO beginning today.”

But, the article says, “Jackey Maarohanye and her school, the Ithuteng Trust, were plunged into a scandal after the students told the South African investigative television program ‘Carte Blanche’ that they are not orphans. They said Maarohanye scripted and rehearsed horror stories about how they had watched their parents die. Students, six of whom were contacted by The [Los Angeles] Times, repeated their allegations, saying she had coached them on how to sob for the television cameras or contributors to extract bigger donations. They told The Times that they recounted their false tragedies with tears and drama at the United Nations and for former President Clinton in 2001, on U.S. television and radio and for other visiting donors and media. Contacted by The LA] Times, she declined to answer questions on the allegations but said the program was malicious and unethical, and expressed anger that ‘Carte Blanche’ had contacted some of her donors for their reactions. The Ithuteng Trust board has since informed sponsors of the allegations and is setting up an independent investigation. Maarohanye ran an adult literacy program before approaching Mandela in 1999 for help in setting up an outreach program for children involved in crime. She recruited students from schools in Soweto, a township outside Johannesburg. Former students told The Times that the program was fun at first, and gave them life skills. But later they had to tell lies for media and sponsors. One Ithuteng patron, Judge Yvonne Mokgoro, argues that the program still has great value for children and says it’s important to distinguish its worth from Maarohanye’s alleged methods. The LA Times story is posted here.

The United Nations is not immune from the donor-duping syndrome. One of its worst manifestations is the numbers-generating done to generate media reporting of stores to attract donor interest.

UN Truth would like to know: How does UNAIDS know exactly how many people have died from AIDS (they give a figure of nearly 40 million persons worldwide)? How do they know even the approximate number of people who might be affected by HIV or AIDs? They rely on statistics provided by Governments — and, if Governments permit, they might do sample testing in some places of women who are admitted to hospital to give birth. The more victims and potential victims, the more press — and the more donations.

The World Health Programme proclaimed that they were on the verge of ending polio, through their vaccination campaigns, by the year 2000. It attracted a lot of media coverage, and donor funding. Then, the WHO said, they were aiming at a 2005 deadline. Now, maybe it will be 2007…

The main United Nations relies much less on donor funding, because the bulk of its budget is composed of its membership dues, called “assessments”, based on a fixed rate for each country according to its level of development and ability to pay. The U.S. pays the most – around 22 percent.

But, the UN’s Millennium Goals are one of the most egregious examples of fluffy nonsense. At a high-level meeting at UNHQ/NY in October 2000, UNSG Kofi Annan and his “strategic communication” honchos got world leaders to pledge to work to half poverty in the world (and other lofty goals) by the year 2015. They worry, now, that the target might not be achieved. But, how do they know the exact numbers of people around the world who were, in the year 2000, “living on less than a dollar a day”? And how will they know, exactly, whether or not half that number will be doing better in the year 2015?