Treatment activists from 21 African countries have formed a movement to promote quality care and support for all Africans living with HIV/AIDS. At a meeting in Cape Town, South Africa recently over 70 activists gathered to inaugurate the Pan-African HIV/AIDS Treatment Access Movement (PHATAM). The organisation was founded by two of the world's leading activists, Zackie Achmat of the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), South Africa and Milly Katana of the Health Rights Action Group in Uganda. PHATAM is dedicated to mobilising African communities, political leaders and all sectors of society to ensure that access to antiretroviral treatment is a fundamental part of comprehensive care for all peopie with HIV/AIDS.
Equity in Health
Alarm over HIV resistance
One in four new HIV infections in the UK may be resistant to current drug treatments, say experts. The annual conference of the Public Health Laboratory Service heard that the growing problem of resistance made measures to prevent initial HIV infection ever more important.
Feachem Says Global Fund Could Dry Up By the Middle of Next Year
Richard Feachem, director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, said that the fund will run out of money by the middle of next year unless it receives new donations, the Boston Globe reports. The fund has received $2.1 billion in pledges but has collected only $500 million.
Further details: /newsletter/id/29384
Mozambique, Malawi Accept GM Food As Hunger Bites
Two more southern African countries, Malawi and Mozambique, have followed Zimbabwe's example and have accepted genetically modified (GM) food as starvation takes its toll in the region. President Mugabe, who earlier this year had said he would not allow "his people" to consume GM food, as it was feared to cause negative reactions in human beings, made a U-turn last month by announcing that the country would begin consuming GMs because of the prevalent food crisis.
Netherlands acts against re-sold AIDS drugs
The Dutch government is to recall a large batch of AIDS drugs which were sold at cut-price rates in Africa and illegally re-exported to the lucrative European market. Dutch officials said that more than 35,000 packets of pills with a market value of close to 15m Euros had been re-sold in the Netherlands and Germany, where a similar investigation is being conducted. Two types of Aids drugs were involved, both made byGlaxoSmithKline.
Further details: /newsletter/id/29358
Scientists close in on a mass murderer;
Genome map a big advance but, for now, malaria is still best fought with bednets
Malaria scythes a similarly deadly path across much of Africa, sparing only higher elevation areas that aren't hot enough or countries like South Africa and Zimbabwe, where it has been brought under control. The continent's annual malaria death toll is well over a million and could be as high as two million, with children five and under making up 90 per cent. So you might expect people like Graham Reid - a British tropical medicine expert who manages a Canadian-financed health project in two rural districts of Tanzania - to be very excited about the multi-million-dollar deciphering of the genetic codes for the most prevalent malaria mosquito and the deadliest malaria parasite, dual breakthroughs announced this week by huge teams involving 160 researchers in 10 countries. Experts generally agree that these gene catalogues should accelerate development of affordable malaria vaccines, improved drugs to treat the disease, more effective chemicals to repel the biting mosquitoes and a range of techniques to neutralize mosquitoes that carry the parasite, including designer insecticides. Instead Graham is thinking about $3 bednets and how many lives these could save while the malaria genome breakthroughs struggle through an expected decade-long development process before producing the promised new anti-malaria weapons.
Further details: /newsletter/id/29356
South Africa: Save 3 Million Lives And Prevent 2.5 Million Infections!
Treatment Action Campaign Statement
Urgent action by Government can save 3 million lives of people living with HIV/AIDS by 2015, reduce the number of orphans and prevent new infections. New research demonstrates the enormous social and economic costs our country will face if government does not lead civil society and the private sector in the use of antiretroviral therapy. The Treatment Action Campaign's (TAC) call for a national treatment plan by government with clear budgets and time-frames is the only chance this government has to avoid a social catastrophe.
Further details: /newsletter/id/29349
Southern Africa: Public Health Services need urgent help to combat humanitarian crisis
Four months after the first warnings of an imminent humanitarian catastrophe in Southern Africa, several hundred thousand people may die because funds to provide basic relief for those who suffer have not been raised. The World Health Organization (WHO) has urged international partners meeting at its Geneva headquarters to do more to help Southern African nations stem a tide of death and disease from the humanitarian crisis in the region.
WHO: Candidates Lining Up To Replace Brundtland Next Year
Joint U.N. Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) Executive Director Peter Piot of Belgium is one of the leading candidates to head the World Health Organization when Director General Gro Harlem Brundtland steps down in July, the Belgian daily De Standaard has reported.
Further details: /newsletter/id/29362
ZAMBIA: Mwanawasa cracks down over food crisis
Human rights groups this week condemned legal action against a Zambian legislator who alleged people had died of starvation in his constituency, thereby contradicting government assurances of no hunger-related deaths in the drought-hit countryside. Vitalis Mooya, the member of parliament (MP) for Moomba, about 240 km south of the capital Lusaka, faces charges of making false statements aimed at causing public alarm, a jailable offence under Zambian law.