International Red Cross Launches AIDS Fund to Help Threatened Staff

Thousands of staff and volunteers of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies have HIV/AIDS, according to Bernard Gardiner, head of the AIDS campaign at the Geneva-based organization. Launching a fund to help workers get vital drugs, Gardiner told reporters that fighting HIV/AIDS is a matter of "organizational survival."

"We can't do our work without keeping these people alive," Gardiner said. The federation estimates that around 200,000 of its 97 million employees and voluntary aid workers worldwide have HIV/AIDS. Most are in Africa.

"We get our members of staff from the community," said Tito Fachi, president of the Zambian Red Cross. Like ordinary Africans, few local Red Cross workers can afford the roughly $50 per month for antiretrovirals, treatment for related infections, laboratory tests and food supplements.

"As a humanitarian organization, we can't afford to keep our hands folded," Fachi said. "There's been a missing link, and that's treatment within our own organization."

The Red Cross Masambo Fund, named for a Zimbabwean worker who died of AIDS in 2001, aims to gather enough funding to start helping 300 people next year. It expects to provide five years' treatment for sick Red Cross workers.

The money will mostly come from voluntary contributions by staff at Red Cross headquarters and from national Red Cross and Red Crescent societies, Gardiner said. No money will be diverted from funds raised to help non-Red-Cross HIV/AIDS patients.

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