Release of the Book: The Politics of AIDS. How They Turned a Disease into a Disaster

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VIVA EDITORIAL <editorial@...>

Viva Books, PRESS RELEASE: WORLD AIDS DAY, FRIDAY, DECEMBER 1, 2006

25 years, 25 million dead, 40 million infected

It’s preventable, and treatable.

AIDS – the avoidable tragedy.

Gill calls those responsible to account.

“THE POLITICS OF AIDS: ”

ISBN 8130904144 PB 128PP 2007 Rs.195.00

2006 is the 25th anniversary of the first U.S. medical reports of AIDS. 25 years

on, AIDS is a global catastrophe, with 25 million dead and another 40 million

infected. India has the world’s largest epidemic, with more than 5 million

infections. The disaster could have been prevented.

In THE POLITICS OF AIDS: How They Turned a Disease into a Disaster, AIDS

campaigner and journalist, Gill, traces the political response to the

epidemic and calls those responsible to account. The book was inspired by his

work in India as head of the BBC World Service Trust anti-AIDS programme from

2001-2003 when vital condom messages were taken off the air on the orders of the

then BJP government.

Meticulously researched, the book unearths new and shocking facts…

• How successive U.S. presidents, including Bill Clinton (now a great AIDS

champion), failed to provide leadership against the pandemic.

• How W. Bush committed an impressive $15 billion to fighting AIDS, but

insists on a seriously flawed AIDS prevention policy.

• How Christian campaigners for sexual abstinence influence the US AIDS

programme – and how moral disapproval of prostitution and needle exchange put

vulnerable people at risk.

• How sex, race and the politics of liberation blinkered President Mbeki’s

response to AIDS in South Africa where one in five is HIV-positive – and how his

health minister, a qualified doctor, says that garlic is a better treatment than

life-saving drugs.

• How courageous Roman Catholic missionaries in South America and Africa stood

up for condoms against the rigid opposition of their local superiors and the

Vatican.

• How western pharmaceutical companies manoeuvred to protect their patents and

profits against the interests of poor people.

The book includes unique interviews with politicians, religious leaders,

campaigners and HIV-positive people:

Colin , who as U.S. Secretary of State was in charge of the Bush AIDS

programme, is now sharply at odds with the administration on the question of

condoms;

Sandy Thurman describes her failure as Clinton’s ‘AIDS czar’ to persuade him to

carry through key campaign promises on AIDS;

Dr Germán Velásquez, a World Health Organization official who was assaulted and

warned to ‘stop messing with the pharmaceutical industry’;

Dr Yusuf Hamied, head of the Indian pharmaceutical company Cipla, who has

struggled to make cheap AIDS drugs available for poor people in developing

countries.

When The Politics of AIDS was published in the UK, The Guardian described it as

‘an admirably hard-headed, fast-moving empirical account of the world’s

political reactions – or failures to react – to the AIDS epidemic over the last

quarter-century’. The Sunday Times called it a ‘powerful critique’ and Time Out

said it was written with ‘precision and authority’.

Gill was based in New Delhi as South Asia correspondent for the Daily

Telegraph during the 1970s and was expelled from India during Mrs Indira

Gandhi’s State of Emergency in 1975. He returned to India in 1999 to run a BBC

World Service media campaign on leprosy which became a major HIV/AIDS project,

one of the biggest AIDS media campaigns in the world.

Gill will be visiting India from November 20 to December 2 and will be

available for interview through Sangeeta Datta, Viva Books; telephone: 42242231,

9818428347; email: publicity@...

D P Sapru

Consultant-Publishing

Viva Books Private Limited

4737/23 Ansari Road

Daryaganj

New Delhi-110002

Phone:42242200, 23258325, 23283121

Fax: 42242240

Email: editorial@...

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