January 2006

Dear Friends,

This year has seen real progress in the war against AIDS, but we’re still not winning. More people with AIDS are receiving treatment than ever before, but the number of additional people who need care and medications is outpacing the number who are receiving them. The apocalypse rages and the death toll continues to mount—more than 3 million in 2005 alone.

Despite yet another challenging year, Health GAP (Health Global Access Project) continues to be a leading force in the struggle to secure universal HIV treatment access, to eliminate barriers to effective HIV prevention, and to bring about an end the global AIDS crisis. Undaunted by the task ahead, we will not let our “moral resolve freeze or evaporate.” We will not stand by and allow this apocalypse to continue.

Your support with a generous tax-deductible contribution will help us keep fighting to speed up the provision of life-saving HIV treatment and defend the rights of people living with HIV/AIDS worldwide.

Even in the difficult political environment of 2005, we won significant victories. Here are some highlights of our progress this year:  

• Health GAP's organizing and activist efforts helped force the United States and the other G8 donor countries to deliver on their promises to cancel 100% of debts owed by Heavily Indebted Poor Countries. Health GAP will work with people with AIDS to ensure these new resources will fund life-saving healthcare programs based on local priorities, including HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment.
  
  
• Our efforts also pushed G8 countries to agree to work for "universal access to HIV treatment for all those who need it by 2010."  This dramatic, historic commitment was made possible through coordinated international advocacy and pressure on powerful G8 politicians. 
  
  
• Health GAP also worked to ensure access to life saving prevention tools like condoms, by challenging barriers to comprehensive HIV prevention in Africa. Health GAP and its allies challenged a politically motivated, artificial shortage of condoms in Uganda which resulted in international media attention and direct pressure on Ugandan policy makers ending more than 10 months of inaction by the government of Uganda.
  
  
• Health GAP is collaborating with activist organizations—led by people living with AIDS—in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and elsewhere to break open the bottlenecks that are obstructing universal access to treatment and prevention.
  
  
• Health GAP launched our fight to end the massive shortage of trained, compensated health care workers in Africa. We’re working to change  donor policies that restrict funding for recurrent costs like salaries, and the policies of the International Monetary Fund that result in poor countries capping health sector spending. Investment in health means not only the difference between life and death for millions people with HIV, but also the viability of African communities and economies.
  
  
• Health GAP strengthened the response of grassroots activist leaders in the United States by training and supporting hundreds of students, people of faith and health care professionals, helping these compassionate Americans move from AIDS awareness to effective AIDS action.

But we cannot keep fighting on these fronts without your «Line4».

Six years ago, when Health GAP began advocating for access to effective HIV treatment for all those who need it, many dismissed our demands as utopian.  But by coordinating our work with other activist groups around the world, Health GAP waged a creative, compelling and ultimately successful campaign in the United States and in the international arena to transform the perception that treating AIDS in poor countries was impossible, into global commitment to the achievable goal of universal treatment by 2010.

To finally turn the tide on the epidemic, we must broaden and strengthen our relationships with allies and grassroots AIDS groups all over the world. These are the courageous people on the front line of the fight against HIV/AIDS in their countries. They mobilize in their communities and bring pressure on their governments to prioritize prevention and treatment; they need Health GAP to continue to compliment their work here.

This remains the challenge for you and for me: to move the world from rhetoric to real action. We will dedicate all our energies to fighting AIDS in 2006 with absolute integrity, but we cannot do it without your support.  Being such a small, efficient yet powerful, ‘lean and mean’ organization, your dollars really have a direct impact. Please send a tax-deductible donation payable to “Mobilization Against AIDS International” today, noting that it is for “Health Gap” on the memo line. You may also donate to Health GAP with your credit card online at www.healthgap.org. One person can really make a difference.

We are definitely making progress in mobilizing the resources we need to bring the AIDS epidemic under control.  Let’s not let future historians say, “How did the world allow this to happen?”  Winning the fight against the global HIV/AIDS pandemic is not impossible; it is imperative. Please help us to win this fight.

Sincerely,

National Steering Committee
Health GAP (Global Access Project)

• End of the year letter to supporters: Read online
• Please make all checks payable to "Health GAP". Send your gift to:
  
  Health GAP
  20 E. 9th St., #18A
  New York, NY 10003

• Health GAP is a registered 501 c3 non-profit organization, TIN  #20-5053765. All donations are tax-deductible to the extent  allowable by law.
  

"Somewhere in the lives you lead, there has to be time carved out to shout from the rooftops... tell the world and its governments, especially the governments of the west, that an apocalypse has unfolded, and it has to be stopped in its tracks before it engulfs us all. If morality is found wanting in the actions of governments, let it be rediscovered in the advocacy of individuals."
-Stephen Lewis, UN Special Envoy, HIV/AIDS in Africa, 11th Conf. on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections, Feb. 8, 2004, San Francisco, CA

• $ 100 - transports activists from Philadelphia or NY to Washington DC so that they can sit across th table from the US Trade representatives and hold them accountable to the line that was drawn at the WTO meeting in Qatar, where it was acknowledged that the rights of public health need to be respected within the agreement of Trade and Intellectual Properties Rights.
• $ 500 - pays for most of a month's cell phone bills for our small staff of 3 who sometimes have to make press calls from such places as Qatar after having spent months trying to negotiate our way into those meetings. We had 2 Health GAP members who were amongst only 2 dozen US activists who were allowed into Qatar. They spent 23 hours a day relentlessly pushing so that the agreement would be reached.
• $ 1000 - is what it costs to bring a packed busload of low-income people living HIV and their loved ones from Philadelphia to protest in Washington DC and hold the government accountable for standing in the way of treatments that they have seen keeping their neighbours and loved ones healthy. It pays for the bus bills, food for the day and transport tokens. This enables us to reduce the barriers that stop people from protesting on the issues that impact them. We can often fill 12 to 15 buses for each protest and often our largest barrier to bringing people out to protest is not the interest, it's the cost.