Some suggestions for how to be an activist
in support of ImpAcTAIDS ideals
- Think about asking ImpAcTAIDS
for a speaker to come to any group to which you belong, whether it is a
political, social, religious group or whatever. We will do our best to give
a talk highlighting what would be appropriate to the group with our aims
in mind. To find out about how and where we are email us at our email address:
impactaidsuk@hotmail.com
- If you are in any sort of organisation which passes motions to go forward
to annual meetings or has a newsletter which gets circulated, try putting
something forward, or if you are not sure what to say, contact us for a
suggested motion or a short article. We will do our best to supply something
suitable.
- Write to your MP and/or go to his/her surgery to discuss the ImpAcTAIDS
message, and try to get some sort of commitment to supporting work on good
HIV/AIDS treatment programmes.
- Write to your MSP and go the his/her surgery to explain how solidarity
even at a Scottish level makes a huge impact.
- Write to your local councillor to suggest that there are possibilities
of making links with health projects and sharing skills, and more importantly
finding ways of supporting communities who can benefit from DOT HAART (Directly
Observed Treatment with Highly Active Anti-Retroviral Therapy).
- Look at the website of DFID's 2008 Paper on achieving universal access
to treatment, which sets out their current strategy. Make comments and
suggest that the best way to help is to fund our kind of treatment programmes.
Website address: http://www.dfid.gov.uk/Pubs/files/achieving-universal-access.pdf
- Read about the StopAIDS campaign and see if you can join a local group:
http://www.stopaidscampaign.org.uk/
- Find out whether People and Planet Group is active at your nearest university
or college and if it is, ask them what help they need in their new campaign
which is access to anti-retroviral treatment. If there isn’t one in
your area, think about setting one up! Their website address: www.peopleandplanet.org
- Look at the International Treatment Access Coalition (ITAC)
website which will give some help to those who are thinking of setting up
treatment programmes. There is now a means of sharing good practice and
before getting too involved in designing a campaign, check to see who has
done what already, and support those which are working well. This organisation
has a long and impressive history of campaigning and has ideas on how to
work with communities who want to access treatment. Their website: http://www.tac.org.za/community/
- Visit www.hivscotland.com for information about what is happening in Scotland with regard to campaigning for universal access to treatment.
