AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), the largest global AIDS organization, today announced that its online community has grown to 100,000 people, including 64,643 Facebook followers and 32,690 members of its website e-community. The group credits its rapidly growing online community with significantly bolstering its recent advocacy efforts targeting heavy-hitters such as President Obama, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and drug giant Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS). AHF's burgeoning online community is now a major component in its efforts to forwarding the group's mission to increase access to HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention services worldwide.
"AHF's growing online community is making it possible for David to take on Goliath," said Michael Weinstein, President of AIDS Healthcare Foundation.
Added Weinstein: "From heated Facebook discussions about Obama's retreat on global AIDS to e-letter campaigns targeting BMS on drug-pricing and Pelosi on her silence on the AIDS drug crisis, AHF's online community is continuing to level the playing-field. It is like having a global army of advocates committed to bringing to the attention of government and corporate leaders the most urgent issues in the AIDS fight today. We would like to thank all of our more than 100,000 online supporters for joining AHF in the fight to increase access to lifesaving HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention programs in the U.S. and around the world."
AHF's e-community played a key role in one of the group's recent drug-pricing victories. After a sustained, year-long advocacy campaign targeting drug giant Bristol-Myers Squibb over the price of its key AIDS drug Reyataz for the nation's AIDS Drug Assistance Programs (ADAPs), earlier this month BMS finally agreed to provide additional cost savings to cash-strapped ADAPs nationwide. Key to AHF's efforts were hundreds of e-letters sent by its online community of AIDS advocates from all areas of the country BMS CEO Lamberto Andreotti urging him to lower the price of Reyataz.
A major strength of AHF's online community lies in its diversity, particularly with regards to geography. There are supporters in every region in which AHF operates—the U.S., Africa, Latin America/Caribbean, the Asia/Pacific region and Eastern Europe—as well as in all 50 states of the U.S. It is largely because of AHF's nationwide reach, that the organization was able to generate nearly 500 letters to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi over her silence on the current AIDS drug crisis in which nearly 3,000 Americans are on waiting lists to receive lifesaving AIDS medications in thirteen states. The letters were sent as part of AHF's "Nancy, Do You Care About AIDS?" campaign through the website www.saveADAPnow.org.
AHF also credits its 100,000-person strong online community with raising the visibility of the issue of President Obama's retreat on the global AIDS fight—an issue that came into full focus during this summer's XVIII International AIDS Conference in Vienna. Since the Vienna conference, many AIDS organizations have joined AHF in criticism of the President for his failure to fully-fund the PEPFAR (President's Emergency Fund for AIDS Relief), the landmark U.S. global AIDS funding bill created by President George W. Bush in 2003. Thousands of AHF supporters visited the site www.changeAIDSobama.org and interacted with AHF Facebook posts on the subject. Popular posts featured provocative AHF ad campaigns comparing President Obama and former President Bush on AIDS, and comparing the amount currently being spent on the war in Afghanistan and the war on global AIDS.
AHF boasts 64,643 Facebook followers, 3,183 Twitter followers and 32,690 members of its website's e-community—for a total of 100,516 online supporters. AHF's Facebook page is particularly active, with several new posts a day viewed by an average of 3,000 people a day. The page has 45,655 monthly active users, 415 daily new "likes" and daily post feedback by an average of 223 users. The top ten countries from which AHF's Facebook followers are from are: United States, Indonesia, Kenya, India, Australia, South Africa, Brazil, Italy, France, and the United Kingdom. The top cities are: Jakarta, New Delhi, New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Mumbai, Atlanta, Delhi, Chicago and Philadelphia.
Affordability and supply remain critical to the success of long-lasting HIV drug