Reach Lesotho

40 Cents

Posted on 18. May, 2010 by Elyse in Elyse

I’ve thought long and hard and I am struggling to think of something I could buy with only forty pennies.  Maybe a side of guacamole with nachos, a coat of nail polish, a text message with US roaming charges, a pencil.  But essentially, I could not think of something that I absolutely cannot live without that I might buy with forty cents.
I can think of 34 million people who might be able to come up with a good answer.

I saw a video a couple of weeks ago and fell in love.  PRODUCT (RED), made famous with supporters like Starbucks, Apple, and Gap, has launched a fantastic new campaign called the Lazarus Effect Campaign and I saw its promotional video on YouTube.  This campaign advertises the idea that the two antiretroviral pills required for an HIV positive person to stay healthy and repress their viral loads are a mere forty cents a day.  The campaign features ARV success stories accompanied by unbelievable before and after photos.  According to their website:

HIV/AIDS is a preventable and treatable disease yet it has killed more than 20 million people in Africa. In 2002 only 50,000 people had access to the medication due to its high cost.  Today, thanks to reduced costs and increased access, more than 3 million people in Africa are now receiving treatment. Still, 3,800 people die every day in sub-Saharan Africa from AIDS. “The Lazarus Effect” film shows that this needn’t be the case.

Wonderful work has been done to make inexpensive generic drugs available to treat Africans living with HIV.  Yet a haunting statistic rolls around in my mind: close to a billion people on Earth live on less than a dollar a day.  Extreme poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa is not conducive to purchasing pills everyday that eat up forty percent of an already meager budget. 

So I’ve decided to do something.  Every day since seeing that video, I have put aside forty cents.  I don’t need anything that I could buy with this money, and I much prefer seeing it go towards keeping a hard-working parent alive to work and raise their children.  Setting aside lose change daily seems simple, but the fact that billions don’t have lose change makes this gesture invaluable.  Surely out of 529 million North Americans, 34 million could set aside forty cents a day.  I know that I am certainly honoured to be doing so, and I am positive someone else in the world thanks me every day.

The Lazarus Effect video premiers May 24^th on YouTube and HBO.  Please feel free watch the promotional videos already released: 

A promotional video (the one speaking of forty cents a day)

A promotional video

A promotional video

httpv://www.joinred.com/#lazarusEffect
The Lazarus Effect website

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