Celebrities Pledge Support For AIDS Orphans By Wearing PINS On World AIDS Day

Media release
23 November 2001

Alice Searle with a South African grandmother and her children.

Heather Mills, Derek Jacobi, Meera Syal, June Brown (Dot Cotton in ‘EastEnders’), Richard E Grant, Germaine Greer, Robert Lindsay and Imelda Staunton will all attach an unusual beaded pin with the AIDS ribbon symbol to their clothing on Saturday 1 December for World Aids Day.

World Aids Day is the only day of the year when countries all over the world will focus on the pandemic, which is killing one in four children in South Africa and 2,000 people per day in Zimbabwe. The celebrities are united in their support for the PIN project (People In Need).

The PINS are the brainchild of Alice Searle, a grandmother in her 50s from Derbyshire. During a stint as a VSO volunteer in South Africa, Alice realised that thousands of grandmothers – known as gogos – have to care for their grandchildren as their sons and daughters are dying from HIV/AIDS related illnesses.

“I will wear the PIN, and wear it with pride, ” says Professor Germaine Greer.

Alice Searle has seen first hand that an entire generation is being decimated by HIV/AIDS. “A whole new society of orphans is being created, they don’t have anyone to look after them. The children who have grandparents are the lucky ones – although some will be HIV positive too. Their grandparents need help to care for them, as they are on very low incomes” explains Alice.

REG wearing his PIN.

Alice decided to take action, and set up the PIN project, using the grandmothers’ traditional beading skills. The gogos make pins in the style of the traditional Zulu love letter, in the shape of the AIDS symbol. Each sells for £2 in the UK, and funds raised have cared for over 100 orphans in Zululand, South Africa. The project is expanding into other communities.

“The problem is the stigma, nobody talks about the cause of death though sometimes they say The Disease,” adds Alice. “I’m hoping the PINS will help to decrease the stigma, as people are earning a living from the income.”

Alice Searle with South African grandmother Priscilla and her two grandchildren, who she is caring for. Her daughter died of HIV related illness after the baby, Ngabenga, was born.

Drugs to treat HIV/AIDS are paid for by the NHS for people in the UK, but out of reach for the majority of people in developing countries. A month’s course of fluconazole to treat a painful and often fatal form of HIV/AIDS-related meningitis costs about £270 in both Kenya and in the UK This is more than the average Kenyan earns in a year (£236), in terms of relative salary it is as if someone in the UK had to personally pay around £17,000 EVERY MONTH for this vital medicine. VSO’s new report Street Price makes clear recommendations for improving this situation to the UK government , which is currently debating the issue in a new Working Group of ministers (see Notes to Editors).

For more information about Street Price, please call Beverley Cohen at VSO on 020 8780 7285 (). Ends Notes to Editors

1. VSO is an international development charity that works through volunteers

2. VSO is a member of the new Stop Aids Campaign, launched on 28 November 2001.

3. Four government ministers including development secretary Clare Short have held the first of a series of three Working Group meetings to discuss access to cheap drugs in developing countries.

4. VSO’s report Street Price recommends a published pricing system and a global forum for equity pricing – a clear way forward for people in developing countries to have access to HIV/AIDS drugs.

5. VSO is providing constructive support for the HIV/AIDS pandemic through its volunteers in health, fundraising, capacity building and administration.