Antiretroviral drugs are "affordable" and launching a program to deliver the medicines to HIV-positive people throughout South Africa is "feasible," according to a cost study completed by the country's national health and finance ministries.
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* Health Minister cool to drug plan
http://allafrica.com/stories/200305140990.html
Equity in Health
ARV DRUG TREATMENT AFFORDABLE in south africa
botswana's radical arv treatment becomes test case
The success of Botswana's "radical" antiretroviral drug program has made the country a "test case" for AIDS treatment in sub-Saharan Africa, the Christian Science Monitor reports. Botswana, which has the world's highest HIV prevalence rate - 38.5% of people between the ages of 14 and 49 are estimated to be HIV-positive - began offering treatment last year.
Chirac 'sacrifice' to get Bush approval
French President Jacques Chirac has sacrificed the health of Aids victims on the altar of mending relations with United States President George Bush which were broken over the war in Iraq, health NGOs charge. The NGO Health Gap said the G8 action plan on health had been weakened after interventions by the US to water down references to increasing access to essential medicines and strengthening the financing of the Global Fund to fight Aids, malaria and tuberculosis.
CHRONOLOGY OF SOUTH AFRICAN HIV/AIDS TREATMENT ACCESS ROW
Following a meeting with South African Deputy-President Jacob Zuma in May, AIDS lobby group, Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), announced it would suspend its civil disobedience action aimed at forcing the government to introduce a national HIV/AIDS treatment programme. A chronology of events during 2002 and 2003 over South Africa's controversial HIV/AIDS treatment access programme is available by clicking on the link below.
G8 charged with global inequalities
As yet another meeting of G8 heads of states started on June 1, the People's Health Movement called upon people around the world to peacefully protest against the policies of neo-liberal globalisation imposed on them by the G8 rich countries. "Over 90,000 children will die from preventable diseases during just the three days when G8 will be held. Poverty, non-access to health care and lack of basic sanitation are the key reasons for these deaths. The G 8 leaders should be doing a serious soul searching," said a PHM spokesperson.
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generic drugs talks deadlocked
Pharmaceutical industry officials said late last month that talks over access to generic drugs, including antiretrovirals, are "deadlocked," despite optimism from officials at the World Trade Organisation, Reuters reports. The talks have been stalled since members missed a December 31, 2002, deadline to reach an agreement. U.S. negotiators in February refused to sign a deal under the Doha declaration to allow developing nations to override patent protections to produce generic versions of drugs to combat public health epidemics such as AIDS unless wording was included to specify which diseases constitute a public health epidemic.
message for WHO member country delegations to 56th World Health Assembly
There is an urgent need for new vaccines, diagnostics, and treatments to address high mortality and morbidity associated with infectious disease. The current system of motivating research and development favours the needs of people in developed countries, while neglecting many diseases that primarily affect people in developing countries. This is according to a message from Medicines Sans Frontiers about access to medicines, made to the 56th World Health Assembly (WHA) to be held between May 19-28.
New leader, new hope for WHO
In the mid-1990s the World Health Organisation seemed doomed to either "flounder in a morass of petty corruption and ineffective bureaucracy" or to die. Neither of these happened. Instead, Gro Harlem Brundtland, who took office as director general in July 1998, restored the organisation's reputation as a credible force in global health. Last week the World Health Assembly approved Jong-Wook Lee as Brundtland's successor. Unlike Brundtland, Lee is not being charged with saving the organisation but with harnessing its potential to transform the lives of the poorest.
Poverty and Inequity in the Era of Globalization: Our Need to Change and to Re-conceptualize
The best way to improve the health and nutrition of the poor still is to have them move out of poverty. For equity to be achieved, economic growth in the development process needs to be deliberately geared towards the needs of the poor. Focusing on sustainable poverty alleviation is inseparable from bringing about greater equity. A focus on both tasks is necessary to achieve the indispensable reduction in the existing rich-poor gap. Focusing on poverty alleviation alone can end up as charity in disguise. Focusing on equity is a step towards social justice. Equity and social justice in health and nutrition are one and the same thing: in health and nutrition, social inequities are always unfair. This is an extract from an article in the International Journal for Equity in Health 2003.
U.N. SPECIAL ENVOY FOR HIV/AIDS IN AFRICA 'AGHAST' AT CONNECTION BETWEEN HUNGER, HIV/AIDS
U.N. Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa Stephen Lewis, during a speech at the Global Health Council's annual conference in Washington, D.C., said that he was "aghast" at the way in which "AIDS was deepening hunger and hunger was deepening AIDS" in Southern Africa. According to Lewis, Africa "reaps what the world sows, and with a vengeance."