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From: Rob.Bates@p1.f381.n634.z3.fidonet.org (Rob Bates)
Newsgroups: sci.med.aids
Subject: Australian AIDS News
Message-ID: <30114@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU>
Date: 19 Dec 89 14:36:07 GMT
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"TRAGIC DELAY" in Summer Campaign

(Reproduced with permission from Melbourne Star Observer #111, 15 December 1989  
(C) 1989 Oz Media Ltd., All Rights Reserved)

A senior (Australian) government adviser has hit at bureaucratic public service  
incompetence which, he says, has delayed an urgently needed new Summer safe sex  
campaign.

A special consultant on AIDS issues and former principle private secretary to  
(federal) Health Minister Neil Blewett, Bill Bowtell said the new campaign had  
been planned to run all Summer starting on World AIDS Day December 1.

The new television commercials will not now hit the screens before March or  
April.

"It is a tragedy that we do not have a proper campaign in place over Summer,  
which is when young people are most at risk," he said.

"There will be many more people infected as a result, and some of those will  
die.

Networks are already re-running the "beds" advertisement. Bowtell argued that  
what was needed instead was a "frank, explicit campaign to give them adequate  
information."

The first Commonwealth-funded national TV advertising campaign, the notorious  
"Grim Reaper", was widely criticised as scare- mongering without providing  
enough clear information on risk reduction.

The second campaign, with hundreds of couples in beds, was censored following  
the commercial networks' refusal to show the original in which one bed had two  
men in it.

Bowtell blamed bureaucrats for the delay in production of the new campaign.

"The politicians deserve a lot of credit," he said, "but the bureaucrats in  
this country do not deliver the goods on time.

"They have to translate policy into action. At the moment, they're not doing  
it."

Health Minister Blewett rejected the claims, saying that the States were to  
blame for the delay.

[From Sydney Star Observer]

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