War is devastating health standards around the world as resources are deflected from fighting disease, health activists said ahead of the World Social Forum. The People's Health Movement, an international pressure group, said that more than 30,000 children over the world died of preventable diseases every day. Nine billion dollars is needed to provide water and sanitation for poor nations, while the global military expenditure was 900 billion dollars a year, said K. Unnikrishnan, spokesman for the movement.
Equity in Health
Wars Deflect Resources from Public Health Crisis, WSF hears
Zambia to give free AIDS drugs to 100,000 patients
Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa announced his government will provide free anti-retroviral drugs to about 100,000 patients by next year through the public health system. In a state-of-the-nation address to parliament, Mwanawasa said 10,000 HIV-infected people have so far been put on anti-retroviral therapy provided by the government.
ACTIVISM ESSENTIAL FOR SUCCESS IN ACCESS TO TREATMENT, says Achmat
Africans must become more active in campaigning for HIV/AIDS treatment initiatives in their communities. This was the key message emerging at a special discussion forum with Zackie Achmat, co-chair of the Treatment Action campaign, in Harare, Zimbabwe on Thursday, December 4, 2003. SAfAIDS (Southern Africa HIV/AIDS Information Dissemination Service) and HIVOS hosted the forum. The meeting was intended to be an opportunity for Zimbabweans to learn more about South Africa’s experiences in the treatment campaign and explore practicable solutions for the Zimbabwean situation.
Further details: /newsletter/id/30163
AIDS toll leads to flood of bogus "miracle" cures in Swaziland
The authorities in Swaziland are doing little to stem a flood of bogus "miracle AIDS cures" in a country with one of the world's highest HIV infection rates. "In a blink of an eye, it seems, Swazis have gone from deep denial of the existence of AIDS to panic as they realise all the people they are burying are not dying of witchcraft. The plethora of AIDS 'cures' is a product of that," AIDS activist Thembi Dlamini told PlusNews.
Further details: /newsletter/id/30148
Health Sector Responses to HIV/AIDS treatment in southern Africa: Confronting the challenge of equity
An Equinet paper
This paper discusses a set of complex, inter-connecting issues related to the moral imperative to increase access to HIV care and treatment in southern Africa, with a particular focus on antiretroviral therapy (ART). It is argued in the paper that an equity-oriented approach is necessary not only from a moral and humanitarian perspective but also for public health reasons. Unless attention is paid to the redistribution of available resources and to the relative and absolute levels of disempowerment amongst individuals, communities and countries, we run the risk of failing to achieve the Millennium Development Goals and the targets that have been set for increasing access to ART.
Further details: /newsletter/id/30157
HOW MEDICAL GIANTS HOODWINK JOURNALS
Pharmaceutical giants hire ghostwriters to produce articles - then put doctors' names on them. Hundreds of articles in medical journals claiming to be written by academics or doctors have been penned by ghostwriters in the pay of drug companies, an Observer inquiry reveals. The journals, bibles of the profession, have huge influence on which drugs doctors prescribe and the treatment hospitals provide. But The Observer has uncovered evidence that many articles written by so-called independent academics may have been penned by writers working for agencies which receive huge sums from drug companies to plug their products.
Mozambique tests cholera vaccine
Mozambique has launched a widespread vaccination campaign against cholera to reduce the impact of the water-borne disease in the southern African state, the government said on Monday. "We want to check whether the use of this vaccine, already used by individual European travellers, can be effective in an epidemic situation," Health Minister Fransciso Songane told a news conference.
Namibian PWA'S HOPEFUL ABOUT TREATMENT PROGRAMME
Plans to provide anti-AIDS drugs to HIV-positive Namibians are slowly taking shape, but the pace of implementing the government's treatment programme is still cause for concern, activists told IRIN on Wednesday. "Things are happening, but not at the pace we want; treatment is being rolled out, but it is still not country-wide," said Conny Samaria, advocacy manager for Lironga Eparu, an NGO assisting people living with HIV/AIDS.
Stepping Back from the Edge: The Pursuit of Antiretroviral Therapy in Botswana, South Africa and Uganda
This report, from the UNAIDS Best Practice Collection, looks at what is being done to challenge the snail's pace of progress on access to antiretrovirals in three very different African countries: Botswana, South Africa and Uganda. It describes who is taking the initiative at grass-roots level and how they face this daunting task.
WHO report says AIDS offers healthcare opportunity
Dr Lee Jong-wook, director general of the World Health Organisation, has said that the organisation's goal of getting lifesaving antiretroviral drugs to three million patients with HIV or AIDS in the developing world by 2005 presents a golden opportunity to put in place desperately needed basic healthcare systems. In the preface to WHO's annual report on global health Dr Lee said that funds for tackling the AIDS crisis could in turn establish lasting health systems for the future treatment and prevention of disease in the developing world.