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.
Equity in Health
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.
World Health report 2003 launched
The World Health Organisation launched on 18 December The World Health Report 2003 - shaping the future, highlights the urgent need for investment and international support to strengthen the failing health care systems of most developing countries. "These global health gaps are unacceptable," said Dr Lee Jong-wook, Director-General of WHO. "Twenty-five years ago, the Declaration of Alma-Ata on Primary Health Care challenged the world to embrace the principles of health for all as the way to overcome gross health inequalities between and within countries," said Dr Lee. "The principles defined at that time remain indispensable for a coherent vision of global health.”
Zimbabwe hospitals turn patients away
The strike by medical doctors and nurses in Zimbabwe is crippling the public health sector, at a time when the poor cannot afford high fees that private hospitals charge. Monica Ngwere, an asthmatic patient from Shurugwi in central Zimbabwe, was last week turned away from Parirenyatwa Referral Hospital in the capital, Harare.
AIDS treatment must adapt to poor communities, says MSF
AIDS treatment procedures must be demystified, simplified, and adapted to the needs of the world's poorest communities in order to be effective, according to the NGO Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF). "To scale up treatment on a large scale, we have to adapt treatment models to real life," Dr Morten Rostrup, President of MSF's International Council told reporters in Nairobi. "Adaptation means fewer pills per day, fewer lab tests and free treatment, dispensed in the communities where people, live, that is at district facilities and at community health posts."
Further details: /newsletter/id/30099
Declaration - International Conference of People Living with AIDS
"We demand that the international community and our governments take all necessary steps to immediately and urgently ensure the following: That donor countries contribute 10 Billion dollars annually to fight HIV/AIDS in poor countries and fully fund the Global fund; That all governments and international agencies immediately collaborate with us to ensure the rapid expansion of access to ARV in line with the WHO goal of 3 million people in less economically developed countries by 2005."
Further details: /newsletter/id/30104
Global Equity Gauge Alliance: Reflections on Early Experiences
The paper traces the evolution and working of the Global Equity Gauge Alliance (GEGA) and its efforts to promote health equity. GEGA places health equity squarely within a larger framework of social justice, linking findings on socioeconomic and health inequalities with differentials in power, wealth, and prestige in society.
Global Health Watch - mobilising a fragmented global health community
Dave McCoy
Global civil society does not participate strongly and consistently in international health advocacy. Whilst high-profile success has recently been achieved with the campaigns on access to medicines and the past twenty years have seen positive achievements due to pressure from civil society (for example, on breastfeeding and smoking), there is a striking lack of involvement and pressure from health campaigners on broad health and health systems issues. Where such pressures exist, they are inadequately drawn upon by the institutions of global health governance – notably the World Health Organisation – whose legitimacy and accountability to the world’s population would be enhanced by more vigorous engagement with civil society.
Further details: /newsletter/id/30128
Contact: patriciamorton@medact.org
HEALTH WORSENS IN ZIMBABWE
The faltering Zimbabwe public health system has been further reduced as nurses and senior doctors join junior and mid-level doctors on a month-long strike. The nurses briefly joined the doctors striking last month for higher pay. They returned to work after being promised an 800% pay rise. But the strike was on again after pay checks last Thursday showed no increase.