United Nations Radio

stacks of postal letters

PRES: Post offices in seven countries will be displaying and distributing AIDS prevention information as part of a new campaign that will be expanded globally. The campaign is a collaboration between UNAIDS, the Universal Postal Union, the International Labour Organization and UNI Global Union, a trade union for postal workers. Bissera Kostova reports.

NARR: The Executive Director of UNAIDS, Michel Sidibe says this is critical time to change the trajectory of the AIDS epidemic by placing prevention at the center of the international response.

Sidibe: Every day we have more than 7,000 new infections, and any time we are trying to put two new people on treatment we have five new infections, which is very costly, and which is not sustainable.

NARR: Mr. Sidibe adds that with its network of 660-thousand post offices around the world, the postal service can reach every segment of society with AIDS education and prevention messages.

Sidibe: The post offices are sending 435 billion letters every year, so for us it is time to really use the post office, which is a place where we all know no discrimination.

NARR: In its first phase the campaign will reach out to postal customers of seven countries highly affected by HIV/AIDS - Brazil, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, China, Estonia, Mali and Nigeria. More countries will join by the end of the year. The project's second phase in 2010 will focus on postal employees and their families. Five and a half million people are employed as postal workers worldwide. UNI Global Union's General Secretary Philip Jennings says many of them are affected by the AIDS epidemic. They are also a bridge to the wider community.

Jennings: We are in the information society, and there's a great deal of talk about social networking - from MySpace, to Facebook. What we are saying here is we have a physical network, with real people - people who are engaged in communities. Postal worker is a vocation!

NARR: Mr. Jennings would like to see more collaboration between the postal and health sectors. He says the postal service can be highly effective in delivering health information as it demonstrated at the start of the current H1N1 flu epidemic.

Jennings: In the UK, within a very short period of time, over one weekend, 27 million homes had received information about the epidemic - information about what to do and where to get help.

NARR: In the third phase of the campaign in 2011, commemorative stamps will be issued to mark the 30th anniversary of the discovery of AIDS in 1981. For UN Radio, I'm Bissera Kostova.

Duration: 2'32"