{"id":213,"date":"2021-07-16T16:23:14","date_gmt":"2021-07-16T06:53:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.flinders.edu.au\/resilient-humanitarianism\/?p=213"},"modified":"2021-07-16T16:23:14","modified_gmt":"2021-07-16T06:53:14","slug":"the-league-of-red-cross-and-red-crescent-societies-ifrc-and-the-emerging-hiv-aids-pandemic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.flinders.edu.au\/resilient-humanitarianism\/2021\/07\/16\/the-league-of-red-cross-and-red-crescent-societies-ifrc-and-the-emerging-hiv-aids-pandemic\/","title":{"rendered":"The League of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) and the emerging HIV\/AIDS pandemic"},"content":{"rendered":"

Highlighting the work of Dr Rosemary Cresswell, Research Fellow, University of Strathclyde, and Honorary Fellow, University of Hull.<\/h3>\n

At the centenary conference of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies<\/a>, Rosemary Cresswell presented her work in progress on the activities of the Red Cross movement in relation to the HIV\/AIDS pandemic. As well as benefitting from funding from the Australian Research Council, her work on this topic has also been supported by a grant from the University of Hull\u2019s QR-GCRF (Global Challenges Research Fund) pump-priming fund from Research England.<\/p>\n

National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies undertook projects relating to HIV\/AIDS from the 1980s, with the League creating a HIV\/AIDS Policy in 1987 at the General Assembly in Rio. The League aimed to assist with policies in consultation with the World Health Organization (WHO), and to actively co-ordinate National Societies and relevant intergovernmental organisations and NGOs. It was not the first time that the League had been involved in long-term activities and research relating to prevention and treatment, including public health; for example other areas of Rosemary\u2019s research for the Resilient Humanitarianism project include typhoid, road safety and road accident first aid.<\/p>\n

\"\"
LRCS Review 1987, p.11.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The archives of the IFRC allow an international approach to the history of HIV\/AIDS, but Rosemary\u2019s research so far has mainly been on African and British activities. She is using the IFRC archives to compare League activities with those of the WHO and UNAIDS. HIV\/AIDS provides an example of how the League (and the IFRC from 1991), responded to the global tragedy through providing an exchange for information about \u2018good practice\u2019, such as national responses and activities. The research uses the records of General Assembly meetings, international youth meetings, task forces and plans of action, together with the records of activities submitted by various countries, with research having particularly looked at Malawi and Kenya.<\/p>\n

Documents are not the only sources. The growing IFRC historic film collection on YouTube<\/a> is useful for this research and for many more topics in relation to health. The following film was produced in 1985, the same year as a Report for the League on AIDS. It presents the American Red Cross\u2019 early response to the challenge of HIV\/AIDS for donated blood in the United States and perceptions of the disease at the time.<\/p>\n

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AIDS: Report for the League, 1985<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It is part of a remarkable international collection of films which are available online, ranging from national societies in countries such as Ireland, Finland, Turkey, the Lebanon, Ethiopia, Malawi, the Philippines, Vietnam, Zimbabwe and many more, with the IFRC\u2019s Archive aiming to digitise 1000 films from 80 countries<\/a>. Topics vary from environmental disasters to medicine, health and first aid, to activities with children and refugees, and much more, with agendas such as fundraising, footage for the historical record, education and information.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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The Red Cross Red Crescent Historic Film Collection<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Highlighting the work of Dr Rosemary Cresswell, Research Fellow, University of Strathclyde, and Honorary Fellow, University of Hull. At the centenary conference of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, Rosemary Cresswell presented her work in progress on the activities of the Red Cross movement in relation to the HIV\/AIDS pandemic. As […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":216,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[82,19,23],"class_list":["post-213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-from-the-archives","tag-hiv-aids","tag-resilient-humanitarianism","tag-rosie-cresswell"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.flinders.edu.au\/resilient-humanitarianism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.flinders.edu.au\/resilient-humanitarianism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.flinders.edu.au\/resilient-humanitarianism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.flinders.edu.au\/resilient-humanitarianism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.flinders.edu.au\/resilient-humanitarianism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=213"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.flinders.edu.au\/resilient-humanitarianism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.flinders.edu.au\/resilient-humanitarianism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.flinders.edu.au\/resilient-humanitarianism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.flinders.edu.au\/resilient-humanitarianism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.flinders.edu.au\/resilient-humanitarianism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}