LONDON (AlertNet) - In an era of tight budgets and shrinking resources, the world's leading AIDS fund has bet on an eye-catching awareness campaign that it hopes will create a big enough buzz on the internet to stop HIV transmission from mothers to babies by 2015.
The campaign, the first of its kind for the Global Fund To Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, unites French First Lady and pop icon Carla Bruni-Sarkozy with world-class musicians and independent artists in a bid to spread the news that health checks and medication can stop the infection from being passed on.
"It is heartbreaking that over 400,000 babies are born with HIV every year even though we have the medical means and the expertise to prevent this," said Bruni-Sarkozy in a statement.
Organisers plan to use various social and traditional media platforms to increase the campaign's impact. Companies like Google, JC Decaux, Jean-Paul Gaultier, MSN, Orange, Tiffany & Co. have given free advertising space while YouTube will be a major platform for the campaign.
The Global Fund - set up in 2002 to fight three of the worldÂ?s most devastating diseases - hopes the campaign will spread via social networking websites like Twitter and Facebook.
"What makes this different from other campaigns is the reach and we hope it will start a chain reaction," said Global Fund spokesman Jon Liden, speaking at a media preview of the campaign last week. "It will be very hard to go on the internet anywhere in Europe in the coming weeks and not come across this campaign," he said.
The campaign's logo comprises two ribbons, one red ribbon - the international symbol of AIDS awareness - and one grey. The smaller ribbon sits inside the larger one to represent mother and child. These same symbols are also used in a series of four animations that convey key messages on HIV/AIDS transmission, all voiced by Bruni-Sarkozy.
In one of the movies, a foetus is seen flying through the world into space. An Amy Winehouse hit single accompanies the film, whose message is: "Life is a beautiful journey - donÂ?t let AIDS kill it before it begins." Music by U2 is the backing track for another film.
"WeÂ?ve just tried to bring in a little bit of the 'cool factor' so that peopleÂ?s hearts can be touched more than their brain," said Julien Civange, a French producer and musician who has spearheaded the campaign, also at the preview.
ENTIRELY PREVENTABLE
The fund, which pools donorsÂ? money and directs those resources to areas of most need, hopes the publicity drive will help it raise billions of dollars from governments for its work. The cost of the campaign was high but the fund hopes its reach will justify the investment.
The fund has decided to highlight mother-to-child transmission of HIV - the virus that causes AIDS - because it says it is possible to eliminate transmission by this channel by 2015.
"It's not just a good intention or a good-will target," Civange said.
Some 430,000 babies were either born with HIV or caught it through breast-feeding in 2008. There were 2.7 million new HIV infections in 2007 - according to the latest data available.
Mother-to-child transmission is almost entirely preventable where services are available, but the coverage levels are remarkably low in most poor countries. Often pregnant women and mothers pass on the virus to their children because of insufficient health checks or a lack of medication that can stop the infection from spreading.
But progress has already been made: a third of pregnant women with HIV received treatment to prevent mother-to-child transmission in 2007, up from only 9 percent in 2004.
The fund hopes all these efforts will pay off by bringing in substantial funds from donors - difficult to achieve in today's environment as the global recession has hit national budgets hard and communications channels have multiplied, Liden said.
"The easier it is to reach people, the harder it is to stand out," he added.
Click here to find out more or to register your support.
(Editing by Katherine Baldwin)
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
