There are few moments in the history of AIDS that can call for celebration. The recent decision of the South African government to begin rolling-out antiretrovirals is certainly near the top of the list. But many persons might be tempted to celebrate more widely as December 1st, World AIDS Day, arrives this year, if only because AIDS has received such mainstream appeal that funds now appear to be travelling in all directions, and new programs are announced nearly everyday. Bill Clinton, once the designer of trade sanctions stopping countries like Thailand and Argentina from importing AIDS medicines, now announces generic drug price negotiations. Randall Tobias, a former executive at multi-national drug company Eli Lilly now claims to advance a $15 billion U.S. foreign AIDS budget. If there is anything we can be certain of, it is that AIDS now travels as a key cultural commodity in the most established institutions. But is this cause for celebration?
Equity in Health
The board of the Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis has voted to send grants of $623 million to poor countries, a $246-million decrease from grants made earlier this year. The amount is considered insufficient in the battle against HIV/AIDS.
AIDS experts have raised doubts about a new study suggesting South Africa's HIV/AIDS epidemic peaked in 2002 and was expected to level off as fewer new infections were reported. The study, published in the recent issue of the African Journal of AIDS Research, said that the epidemic in South Africa peaked last year with about 4.69 million people living with HIV/AIDS and had started to level off.
The Competition Commission in South Africa has found that pharmaceutical firms GlaxoSmithKline South Africa and Boehringer Ingelheim have contravened the Competition Act of 1998. The firms have been found to have abused their dominant positions in their respective anti-retroviral (ARV) markets. For press releases from the Competition Commission, the Treatment Action Campaign and GlaxoSmithKline, please click on the link below.
The health delivery system in Zimbabwe is declining as medical personnel leave the country in search of better working conditions and more money. The exodus of nurses and doctors and other professionals from Zimbabwe for economic reasons is accelerating, with most of those leaving going to Britain, the country's former colonial master.
Former United States President Bill Clinton has announced a deal with four generic-drug companies to slash the price of AIDS drugs in parts of the developing world. The agreement with three Indian pharmaceutical firms and a South African company will cut the price of a commonly used triple-drug treatment by almost a third, to about US$ 0.38 a day per patient. They include nine countries in the Caribbean and the African nations of Mozambique, Rwanda, South Africa and Tanzania.
Using the mandates of the UN General Assembly Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS in 2001, the UNAIDS Secretariat and Cosponsors collaboratively developed a series of global/ regional and national indicators to measure the global community's progress in reaching the Declaration's targets in line with the Millennium Development Goals. This report, by the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/ AIDS, which presents data from the first use of these indicators, represents the most comprehensive assessment to date of the state of global, regional and national responses on the broad range of challenges posed by HIV/AIDS.
Over 1.2 billion adolescents - one person in five - are making the transition from childhood to adulthood. How well they are prepared to face adult challenges in a fast changing world will shape humanity's common future. Adolescents must be enabled to avoid early pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections and HIV/AIDS while being given skills, opportunities and a real say in development plans, stresses The State of World Population 2003 report by UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund.
New findings on maternal mortality by WHO, UNICEF and UNFPA show that a woman living in sub-Saharan Africa has a 1 in 16 chance of dying in pregnancy or childbirth. This compares with a 1 in 2,800 risk for a woman from a developed region. These findings are contained in a new global report on maternal mortality just released online by the three agencies.
The cost of health care in Zimbabwe finally went beyond the reach of most people this month when medical drug suppliers and pharmacies hiked prices by more than 1,000 percent, citing an increase by the same margin in import costs.