The Role of the Internet

Internet satellite backbone was used since late 2005 in order to improve communication between the program and the National AIDS Control Program and other partners.

This tool turned out to be very useful in order to:
• Transfer required data about clinic progress to the NACP in a timely fashion;

• Gain access to state of the art medical knowledge and to exchange with colleagues throughout the world on medical matters;

• Have access to the latest HIV/AIDS information from all over the world;

• Communicate accounts and reports to the donors;


• Overcome the policy of hiding information from the Have Nots which was used to keep the “cooperative corruption” between Elites (corrupt ELCT representatives) and Do-Gooders (financing partner missions) going;

• Get information about secondary school results to students.


Our experience is that, internet is a powerful and cost effective means to close the information gap between informed Elites and Do-Gooders who try to keep information away from the suffering Have Nots!
Without access to internet, the protest against the thieves in the church and the government would not have emerged so quickly and the situation would be even further from change and liberation.
Blogs were used to inform the donors and automatically developed into a control mechanism for the program as interested donors started asking and communicating.

www.highlandshope.com
www.mbogela.blogspot.com
www.rainerbrandl.blogspot.com
www.gerhardraxendorfer.blogspot.com
www.judithschnabler.blogspot.com



Technology: CD4 Counters - a business opportunity for Elites?

“A Dar es Salaam businessman with exclusive rights to supply HIV test kits – at hiked prices – is behaving like a gagged man against press probes,... ...Rajan’s Biocare has supplied the ministry with chemistry analyzers, hematology analyzers and FACS Count cd4 count machines which are said to be costly because they use expensive reagents.”
Partec’s CD4 counters were successfully used for about 18 months in the program. One counter that was donated to PIUMA was capable of doing CD4% counts (necessary to treat children). Later on these CYFLOW Counters were replaced at BLH by a FACSCount (Becton and Dickenson) that ended up not working most of the time and not easily able to provide results for children .
The Elites in the government and the church management were acting against ministerial regulations of their own country and against the human rights of PLWHA by impairing a clinic which was regularly providing CD4 counts according the requirements of the NACP.
It is a truism of economics that higher prices result after decisions that lead to market domination by a single product because of a lack of competition. Following market monopolization by Becton and Dickenson, in some cases the prices for reagents for the FACSCount was reportedly 25 times higher than those of other manufacturers or the announced minimum price .
A CYFLOW CD4 counter can run on a car battery or a solar panel and because of its robustness and portability it can be operated in a rural health centre or in a car by one trained person – its handling is rather simple. Mobile CD4 laboratories are already successfully used in Nigeria. In December 2005 a price guarantee of 10 years was offered to Tanzania for CYFLOW Counters and reagents.
Media reports in Tanzania claim that civil servants and university employees who are leading assessments of health products for use in Tanzania have close ties with businessmen dealing with the import of such products . It is said that they were promoting certain products while denying others access to the market. The result of these odious relationships is that a lot of money is spent for overpriced, sometimes lower quality, equipment that does not work well in resource-limited rural settings. Fewer CD4 counts are done and patients are kept from life saving treatment. Elites are indirectly promoting misery and death among the Have Nots for personal gain, while Do-gooders keep dumb in order “not to interfere in another country and to respect the local government”



Current president of Tanzania Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete received an explanation
about PIUMA’s Partec technology
during his campaign visit in December 2005.
His message was,
“Let’s develop partnerships.”

(PIUMA is in possession of two functioning cd4 count machines
that could be used in a mobile clinic
bringing monitoring and treatment to the people)


The counters are lying idle in Bulongwa as trained staff were locked out by the church
and equipment was confiscated and held for several months by people
who do not know how to run and maintain it



Theft and Systemic Corruption: The International Alliance

“ELCT TRICKSTERS “EAT” 270 MILLION DONOR SHILLINGS
…The Tricksters of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Tanzania… …Diocese of Makete District in Iringa Region are alleged to have “eaten” more than 270 million shillings money donated… ...Institutions whose money has been “eaten” (stolen) include the Headquarters of the Diocese… ... Audit investigation conducted at the end of last year (2005)… … its finding presented to the Diocese Bishop Shadrack Manyiewa, shows that 272, 554, 937 have been stolen… …The Bulongwa Lutheran Hospital… ... more than 176,682,917 shillings has not been accounted for...”
ELCT and LMC and most of the Donors who invested a lot of money in the SCD and in Makete did not react in a timely fashion according to local laws and national and international conventions on human rights and the felonies within the church structures were not officially announced to the authorities by them.
“It may be worthy noting that misappropriation of funds did indeed occur at Bulongwa Lutheran Hospital and Makete Development Foundation” . This sentence by the presiding ELCT bishop was found only after the frauds were communicated to the public via the media by representatives of the local community . The existence of earlier internal SCD/ELCT audit reports indicating fraud make one wonder why this did not raise eyebrows among the donors or in the ELCT/LMC many years before. Instead ELCT, LMC and some overseas missions actively spread misinformation in their reports, newspaper articles and mail outs regarding the situation with SCD/ELCT.
Other partners in this informal international alliance of elites are obviously civil servants at the Ministry of Health with their ties to dealers of the FACScount. The MoH is currently involved in a procurement scandal concerning CD4 counters and HIV Tests which directly led to the suffering of the Have Nots in Bulongwa/Makete and throughout the country.
The Makete and Iringa police unlawfully detained Jackson Mbogela, the project coordinator of EAWM, for 4 days and did the same with a journalist named Edwin David after they became publicly vocal about the scandals in Makete.
EAWM is deeply concerned that foreign donors to ELCT/SCD have not at any time admitted openly their complicity and responsibility for this corruption, rather they are obviously attempting to maintain financial support for a Diocese where felonies are ignored with and no new accountability structure can be seen on the horizon. At no time in this regrettable story did donor missions find public words of solidarity with the betrayed Have Nots. EAWM believes that some the ELCT, the donor missions and some government officials have become structural allies in denying the PLWHA a better care and rapid scaling up of access to life-saving treatment.