UNAIDS press conference 12 June 2020

So once again, thank you for joining and allowing me to introduce you to the new Executive Director of UNAIDS, Winnie Bianima.

Miss Bianima began her career as a champion of marginalised communities and women as a Member of Parliament in the National Assembly of Uganda.

A world recognised expert on women's rights, Miss Bianima founded the still thriving civil society organisation Forum for Women in Democracy.

She has served at the African Union Commission as Director of Women and Development, at UNDP as the Director of Gender and Development and more recently as the Executive Director of Oxfam International.

Miss Bianima holds an advanced degree in Mechanical Engineering in Energy Conservation and the Environment and an undergraduate degree in Aeronautical Engineering.

Miss Bianima was appointed as the Executive Director of UN AIDS by the UN Secretary General on the 14th of August 2019 and took up her functions on the 1st of November.

So I'm delighted to hand over to Winnie Bianima.

Thank you and thank you, members of the press in Geneva, for taking time to meet me.

[Other language spoken]

I'd like to meet you in person, but this pandemic won't allow that.

But grateful that we can meet virtually.

I'm leading you and Asia at a very critical moment.

We are experiencing today a virus that has shaken the world, taken lives, destroyed livelihoods, brought down economies.

And this virus and the way it attacks people and economies has many parallels with the AIDS epidemic.

And as you know, UN AIDS has been fighting AIDS for the last 25 years.

We are therefore in a very privileged position to be helpful in fighting the coronavirus pandemic.

Like HIV and like most epidemics pandemics, the impact of the coronavirus hits hardest on the most vulnerable people and it takes advantage of existing inequalities.

So it is those at the intersections of axis of inequality that are most hurt, the axis of gender inequality, racial inequalities, age inequalities, poverty or class inequalities.

People who come at those intersections are the most affected, most hurt, and we are seeing it.

So we also see that some are getting the benefit of science, but others are not.

For example, we know that rich countries have grabbed PPE, personal protection equipment, test kits and stocked up for themselves, and poor countries have been left in the back of the queue waiting to buy to test their own people.

So some of the benefits of science, some not.

Some are getting quality services, others are not.

So to beat pandemics, to really beat it globally, we must focus on addressing these inequalities in access and inequalities in outcomes.

We must tackle them head on.

And this is even more important today because we are seeing epidemic control in countries where it started, in Asia, in Europe, in North America, or we're seeing the pandemic moving to areas with huge regions with huge inequalities such as Latin America and Africa.

So we need to tackle these inequalities.

We've also found that HIV in fighting HIV some lessons that we want and are trying our best to bring in fighting the coronavirus.

For example, we know that the battle is won at the very local level, so empowering communities is the key.

We are now using the very structures in many countries that the HIV movement created to respond to the to the coronavirus.

It's the networks of empowered communities and people who've lived through this for 40 years who know how to take charge of their lives and find solutions for the health of their communities to prevent and and and to survive.

And these communities and the leaders in those communities can move fast, faster than anybody else.

So our whole community of HIV activists, volunteers, community LED service providers have been recruited in many countries to fight the coronavirus.

And they're the ones, for example, in South Africa who are working to go into communities to trace, to do contact tracing, to find the the, the people who need service, who need to be, and then to, to trace their contacts and isolate them.

This work is being done by people who were trained to fight the HIV virus.

HIV labs, the physical infrastructure, are also being repurposed to fight both epidemics.

So you find that top HIV researchers and scientists are also leading the coronavirus response in their countries.

For example, Ambassador Birx, Debbie Birx and Professor Tony Fauci in the United States, you've been seeing them on TV.

They've been leaders on HIV.

Salim Abdul Karim and his wife Karisha in South Africa are leading the scientific community that's advising the government.

So we're seeing benefits coming from our work.

In 12 countries, including South Africa, UN AIDS is leading or playing a major role in the UN task force supporting governments.

So we are part of delivering our support through the UN country teams on the ground, and we are also contributing at the global level in shaping the UN response through the senior committees that I and my colleagues sit on.

We're working with a global fund and the World Bank to ensure that COVID funding that they've put aside reaches communities and doesn't go over their heads through intermediaries and that communities deliver good service on the ground.

We are monitoring supply chains and service delivery.

We are monitoring human rights impacts.

These three areas are very important.

We want to be sure that manufacturers do not switch from producing commodities for prevention and treatment of HIV in order to manufacture for the coronavirus.

It can't be 1 pandemic against another, it has to be both and this is easy to see happening it you may find that a test kit costs 10 times more than a condom in terms of profits.

So we have to be sure that the commodities for people for for HIV are not affected by profit seeking and also by lockdown measures such as interruptions in transportation.

We are monitoring service delivery, of course, to ensure that our people, particularly people living with HIV, vulnerable people can access service delivery points and modifying service delivery so that it works for them.

If lockdown measures are there, how do you make sure that people can get their ARVs?

So we promote for example, what we call multi month dispensing so that they get they are stocks and don't have to go to facilities.

Human rights in lockdowns.

We are getting shocking and alarming stories about human rights violations and we know that this happens in epidemics.

Blaming the victims, turning on excluded groups and further excluding them and stigmatising them.

Gay men hiding instead of going to get their medicines, sex workers being denied food, being denied services, transgender people being asked to bring an identity when they can't get it in order to access services.

We're monitoring all this and supporting and pushing and working with governments to lift these and to address these violations of human rights.

I could say more, but I want to go to vaccine.

This is very, very important.

As you know, a lot of money has been put down, a lot of it public money to search for a vaccine for the coronavirus and treatments.

The Europeans, together with the Gates Foundation, recently had a successful pledging conference and raised $8 billion for vaccines, treatments, diagnostics.

Now we want any vaccine that hits the market to be a global public good.

And UN AIDS is leading a campaign with civil society to insist that a vaccine should not be a profit product.

That is therefore the rich to grab and save their lives and leave others to die, But that it is a global public good, shared by all, distributed in all regions so that we all benefit from the science.

We have called it a people's vaccine and we are seeing more governments coming on board.

We managed to get 150 signatories to a very important letter calling for a vaccine that's a global public good.

It included 5052 former presidents and heads of state, Heads of Government.

It included leaders such as President Ramaphosa of South Africa, chairs the African Union, Prime Minister Imran Khan of of Pakistan and many others, Nobel laureates like Joseph Stiglitz and others.

And the momentum is growing.

We don't want competition for profits and big countries that are rich to take advantage of the A vaccine and leave others to die.

We want to be sure all are served.

So that is some of the work that we are doing at UN AIDS and in within that we are looking at how UN AIDS can adapt itself in a changing global health architecture.

We're seeing that there are important lessons to learn and we want that as we come out of this virus, we come out with stronger health systems that deliver to all people their right to health.

We will be opposing and bringing evidence to the table that a profit LED health system can never deliver the right to health to all people.

There are some people for whom the markets don't work.

They must get public provision.

We will be pushing in that area.

We will be insisting that human rights must be at the centre of a health system that works for all people.

We will be insisting on these principles that we have learnt from our work fighting HIV, human rights communities, equality in access and in outcomes, on health and science, working for all people.

I want to leave it there because you may have particular questions to ask and it will be more interesting to to answer your questions.

[Other language spoken]

So indeed, I'll now open the floor for questions.

And if you have a question almost be an e-mail, then please raise your hand in the chat function.

I don't see any hands yet.

So they they may have had all the all the but maybe I must.

Or maybe I'm missing something?

I may add 1 aspect of our work that I didn't mention, which is about financing, financing health.

I touched on it, but I want to say that there are many countries, poor countries, for whom coronavirus has found in a difficult situation.

I'm thinking of, I'm talking about the countries of Africa that are highly indebted.

Some are facing dead distress.

Their growth has been slowing because of the fall in commodity prices, while at the same time their budgets are being sucked up by debt repayments.

These countries cannot immediately respond to coronavirus successfully without debt being suspended.

So we've been joining others in pushing the rich countries, the creditors, some of them are private institutions to suspend the debt and even cancel some of the debt to give a chance for these countries to be able to invest in fighting the coronavirus.

That's a very important part of our work.

But beyond that, we are also looking for solutions to financing health.

And this will come from addressing the big issues of tax daunting that big companies, including pharma.

Pharma is a big culprit here.

Do not pay their fair share of taxes.

Hide behind behind the shell companies, put their money in tax havens and deny developing countries that their tax revenue to build strong health systems.

This is an area we're going to be working in to ensure that countries can raise the resources they need to to to address the right to help.

They live on the right to help.

[Other language spoken]

We still have no hands.

[Other language spoken]

If anybody does have any questions.

Oh, we have a Peter Kenny, please.

[Other language spoken]

Peter Kenny, I think from South African Independent.

[Other language spoken]

Sorry, I'm I'm a bit late and I, I I must part part of the briefing.

I just wondered if you could actually comment on how the coronavirus is COVID-19 is going to affect UN AIDS work in South Africa, which is the, I think it is still the country with the most number of people who have HIV AIDS virus.

That is a very good question.

[Other language spoken]

Of course, you're right.

South Africa is the country with the highest burden of HIV and that is also working the hardest to fight the HIV epidemic.

Millions of people are have been put on treatment over the last 10 years, but there are still a couple of million who still need, who are HIV positive, who need to get on treatment.

So there is that burden.

And South Africa finds itself also now facing the coronavirus, hitting them quite hard, actually almost hardest.

On the African continent.

We are seeing some positive things.

And and also a country that is in deep economic problems with a slowing economy that was actually going into recession just around the time the coronavirus hit.

So here's a country whose economic means are constrained and now facing 2 colliding epidemics.

So but we're seeing positive things about South Africa.

One, we're seeing South Africa learning the lessons of HIV to immediately shape the response to COVID, like taking advantage of the community work, health workers to, to immediately and the volunteers immediately bring them into working on the coronavirus, but keeping an eye on the board not to take away services for HIV that we are seeing.

And we are working closely with the government and civil society on that.

We are also seeing a a response that is science driven, that's driven by the evidence, not just what politicians may think.

There is a scientific committee that's working closely with the national response to shape their response.

Sometimes they have tensions, you see, you see them in the media.

But that's the right thing to have a response that's evidence driven.

We are seeing a multi sectoral approach.

We're seeing the government working on the socio economic impacts and putting putting in measures to address them and not to let lock down measures destroy the lives and livelihoods of people.

So that's my sexual approach is also a positive and a lesson from HIV.

But suddenly South Africa needs support and that's why we are calling on the rich countries, the creditor countries and institutions to cancel debt, to reduce, to suspend debt so that countries like South Africa can have the fiscal space to address 2 epidemics.

Secondly, we are also calling for funding from the richer countries to support the national.

Responses in other countries because we know that we are everyone.

My health depends on your health, yours depends on mine.

The the battle must be won in South Africa, as it must be won in Switzerland, as it must be won in Canada.

So we have to see it as a global pandemic and support each other to fight and win.

Thank you, Winnie, and thank you, Peter for that question.

Still no hands raised.

So I suggest if anybody does have any follow up questions, then please get in touch with me directly and I'll put you in touch with Winnie.

So thank you very much for joining.

Just a reminder of the global report.

[Other language spoken]

HIV will be the Friday the 3rd of July.

So thank you very much for joining and we hope to see you again soon.

[Other language spoken]

Bye, bye and thank you media.