Social media and business leaders are banding together to fight mother to infant transmission of HIV
AIDS is a horrible disease and the tiniest victims, babies born with the disease are in desperate need of help. Enter social media leaders who plan to partner with bankers and consultants to reach a goal of 0 births of babies with AIDS by 2015.
According to the Associated Press as reported by Yahoo, John Megrue, CEO of Apax Partners U.S., said that there aren’t any medical or technical issues that surround the problem. The problem is mainly an issue in developing countries with the majority of cases coming from Sub-Saharan Africa. The 2915 Goal is the same goal set by UNAIDS, to eliminate new HIV infections among children.
According to AVERT, 390,000 children were infected by HIV. Of those 390,000 infected children, 90 percent or 351,000 are infected either during birth or breast feeding. Preventing the spread of AIDS from mother to child requires giving the mother an antiretroviral drug before birth and during breast feeding. It seems like such a simple fix except many HIV infected mothers never get the medicine because they live in rural areas where the drugs aren’t available.
Purchasing the drugs and getting them to those rural areas requires money and that is where this partnership of business and social media leaders comes in. John Megrue will be working with bankers and consultants to “coordinate work being done by several governments and other international donors, as well as filling in gaps in the funding.”
Randi Zuckerberg who founded R to Z Media will be asking 1,000 “influential Twitter and Facebook users” to help spread the word about mother to child transmission of the AIDS virus. She hopes that those same influential social media users will help raise millions for this cause.
"I’m calling this a social good broadcast experiment," she said. "The long-term vision is for this to be a group of thousands or millions of people who can all broadcast in a coordinated manner where there is a global crisis."
While Megrue says that this is not a technical issue, that doesn’t mean that technology in form of social media can’t be used to help solve this issue. After all, this isn’t the only cause that similar social media tactics have been used. Malaria Envoy was created to “utiliz[e] their social profile to keep online and offline media audiences focused on the movement, milestones and resources required to achieve the Secretary-General’s goal of providing all endemic African countries with malaria control interventions by the end of 2010.” The actual goal of UN Secretary General is to achieve the goal by 2015. The Malaria Envoy group agreed to take at least one action per month for 12 months.
While Zuckerberg is calling on 1,000 “influential social media users”, there is no reason why even those of us who are marginally influential can’t join the cause.
Above photo: A health care worker examines a child in l’Auberge de l’Amour Rédempteur clinic, Benin. The clinic benefits from Global Fund financing for antiretroviral and other HIV-related medicines, HIV testing, medical personnel and training of health workers.
Credit: The Global Fund / John Rae
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