Delegates attending the second people’s health assembly called for the total abolition of patents on essential medicines. “Patents are shortening the lives of people and is a curse for poor people,” said Dr. Eduardo Espinoza, the former dean of University of El Salvador. “There are two serious concerns about essential medicines. Firstly, it is about their availability. Secondly its affordability,” said Mr. Amitava Guha, a trade union leader from India. “The manifestations of the unfair patent regime are taking a heavy toll on poor people, especially those who are infected and affected with HIV / AIDS,” said Mr. Guha, who currently heads the Federation of Medical Representatives Association of India.
Equity in Health
PHA calls for end to patent regime
Further details: /newsletter/id/31030
2 billion more people need access to basic sanitation by 2015
Basic sanitation must reach 138 million more people every year through 2015 – close to 2 billion in total - to bring the world on track to halve the proportion of people living without safe water and basic sanitation, the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF warn in a new report. Meeting this Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target would cost US $11.3 billion per year, a minimal investment compared with the potential to reduce human illnesses and death and invigorate economies.
Africans should not be silent about unethical trials
A quarter of all clinical trials are now done in the developing world, but often the research lacks a rigorous ethical framework. Western researchers or funders tend to shoulder the blame for trials that the international scientific community deems unethical, says Gilbert Dechambenoit in this editorial in the African Journal of Neurological Sciences. But, he argues, African scientists should bear just as much responsibility for unethical scientific practices.
Challenging stigma by living positively with HIV in South Africa
In the face of widespread stigma around HIV/AIDS, few people have the courage to go public about their status, but one such person is Mampho Leoma, 28, a mother of two from Mapetla, in the Johannesburg township of Soweto. Leoma recalled the day she found out she was HIV-positive: "It was the 26th of January last year; I was four months pregnant ... It was very sad - I didn't expect the result. At the time I was not going with anyone else but my husband, and I didn't think he was going out with other girls either."
Free ARVs for 100,000 by 2006, Tanzanian prime minister says
At least 100,000 people living with HIV/AIDS in Tanzania will receive anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs) free of charge by the end of 2006, Prime Minister Frederick Sumaye announced last month. "The target is to ensure at least 400,000 people are on free ARV treatment within the next five years," he said in a speech before parliament in Tanzania's administrative capital, Dodoma.
Kenya and Tanzania to start producing anti-malaria drug
A company involved in the production of artemisinine, an anti-malaria drug, is due to set up extraction plants in Kenya and Tanzania to make the drug easily and cheaply available to patients, an official for the company said. The factories would be established in East Africa because of the potential in the region for cultivating artemisia-annua, the plant from which the anti-malaria drug is extracted, the managing director of African Artemisia Limited, Geoff Burrell, said at a conference convened by the UN World Health Organization (WHO) in the northern Tanzanian town of Arusha.
MDGs to be missed in Africa
The United Nations Human Development Report Office released preliminary figures from the 2005 human development report projecting that the UN’s millennium development goals will be missed by a wide margin in Africa, reports the British Medical Journal. The UN undertook in 2000 to halve the number of people living on less than a dollar a day, to cut infant mortality by two thirds, and to give every child primary education by 2015. Ten African countries have worse infant mortality rates now than in 2000.
Modern food biotechnology, human health and development
This report presents the potential benefits and risks associated with GM foods. It finds that GM foods can increase crop yield, food quality and the diversity of foods which can be grown in a given area. This in turn can lead to better health and nutrition, which can then help to raise health and living standards. The report also recommends that in future, evaluations of GM foods should be widened to include social, cultural and ethical considerations, to help ensure there is no "genetic divide" between groups of countries which do and do not allow the growth, cultivation and marketing of GM products.
Tackling child malnutrition
Malnutrition can be dealt with, for less than $US 20 per child per year. This has always seemed like quite a lot of money, but the comparison with HIV/AIDS should inspire us to be more ambitious. Children have a right not to be brain damaged by malnutrition. But, in addition, not tackling malnutrition makes achieving the MDGs simply impossible: malnutrition is an indicator for the poverty MDG, but improving nutrition status is also an absolute requirement if the health and education MDGs are to be met.
“Organising People’s Power for Health”
Community Working Group on Health statement
The Community Working Group on Health will this year commemorate June 6th National Health and Safety day under the theme “Organising People’s power for health”, we do this in solidarity with the Trade Unions of Zimbabwe. The Community Working Group on Health is a network of 30 membership based civic/community based organisations that aim to collectively enhance health and community participation in health in Zimbabwe.
Further details: /newsletter/id/30980