New Year’s greetings with a difference
AIDS campaigners hope Japanese government will help G8 keep their promises in 2008.
A Japanese custom of sending New Year’s postcards to family, friends, and colleagues has a significant new twist in 2008. The Japanese Ministry for Foreign Affairs Ministry and embassies throughout the world are receiving New Year’s greetings from AIDS campaigners expressing the hope that the Japanese government places HIV and AIDS clearly on the G8 agenda as it hosts the next G8 summit.
“These special cards recognise Japan’s past leadership on health and express the hope of millions of people around the world that Japan will give new impetus to G8 leadership on HIV,” says Masaki Inaba, Programme Director for Global Health Africa-Japan Forum. “We hope that through its leadership in the G8 summit at Hokkaido Toyako this year, Japan will influence the other G8 nations so that together we can fulfil the Millennium Development Goals related to AIDS and other infectious diseases, and the promise of universal access to HIV prevention, treatment and care by 2010.”
The cards were prepared by the World AIDS Campaign on behalf of civil society organisations monitoring the G8 commitments and actions around HIV and AIDS. Organisations in each of the G8 countries – Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, United Kingdom, United States – have sent cards to the Japanese Foreign Ministry and embassies in those countries. Campaigners in Africa – the continent hardest hit by the AIDS pandemic – are also sending cards in what previously has been a distinctly Japanese custom.
“Japan has demonstrated bold leadership in the past when it hosted the G8 summit in 2000 and opened the door for major progress in the response to HIV and AIDS, including the founding of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria,” says Marcel van Soest, Executive Director of the World AIDS Campaign. “We need that same kind of leadership in 2008 to move the response to AIDS to the next level so that universal access to prevention, treatment, care and support can be realised and incidence of HIV can finally be reversed.”
For more information contact the World AIDS Campaign at media@worldaidscampaign.org, +44 1524 727 651 (UK), +31 20 616 9045 (Netherlands) or +27 74 111 27 44 (South Africa).
To download the card, please click below:
To read the press release in Japanese, please click below: