South Africa's National Association of People Living with HIV/AIDS (NAPWA) on continued a protest outside the Johannesburg offices of a drug multinational as part of its "Black Easter" campaign. The campaign was launched to "convince pharmaceutical companies to provide free antiretroviral drugs in the country" and included demonstrations outside the offices of the Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Association (PMA), NAPWA national director, Nkululeko Nxesi, told PlusNews.
Equity in Health
Activists continue HIV/AIDS protests in south africa
Glaxo Will Further Cut Prices of AIDS Drugs to Poor Nations
GlaxoSmithKline, the world's largest maker of AIDS drugs, has announced that it is further cutting the prices of these drugs by as much as half in poor countries. The price of Combivir, the company's popular AIDS therapy that combines two drugs in a single pill, has been cut to 90 cents a day, from $1.70, a reduction of 47 percent, the company said. With the reduction, the medicine is available at a price roughly equivalent to some generic versions of AIDS drugs, it said. The price of Combivir in the United States is about $18 a day.
Health equity information resource
"Awareness of health equity as an international issue has reached the point where sufficient momentum has built up to stimulate the types of collaborative action that are necessary to monitor and advocate for health equity worldwide." (Whitehead M, Dahlgren G, Gilson L. Developing the policy response to inequities in health: a global perspective. In: Evans et al (eds), 2001). Whitehead and Evans argue for practical initiatives including enlarging the health equity policy community, by building or strengthening networks of researchers and advocates. As a step along these lines an information resource has been published detailing organisations, people, networks and resources relevant to work on health inequities, covering those with a strong interest in health inequities, as well as outlining the health equity interest of some of the large international and funding organisations. The emphasis in this document is on low and middle income countries since work regarding health inequalities in the richer industrialised countries is advanced in comparison.
Health inequalities: the legacy of apartheid in South Africa
How successful is South Africa at providing decent healthcare for all its citizens? Is the gap in healthcare between the poorest members of society and the richest getting narrower? The Universities of Cape Town and Witwatersrand, South Africa, looked at South Africa’s efforts to ensure all sections of the population have proper access to health services. A right to good health services is enshrined in the country’s constitution and has played an important part in ensuring the health service remains a priority. Nevertheless the study found certain problems have arisen in the drive to create an equitable health system.
HIV/AIDS crippling south african public health sector
With an increasing number of HIV/AIDS patients seeking health care from already over-stretched public sector facilities, the HIV/AIDS epidemic is undermining the quality of care in South Africa's health system. According to The South African Health Review (SAHR) for 2002, published recently by the NGO Health Systems Trust (HST), HIV/AIDS is the "single most important" challenge to improving health care delivery in the country.
Rolling back reality: making malaria control accessible to all
Effective tools to control malaria are available now but are not being accessed by the populations in need. The prime example is insecticide-treated bednets (ITNs). Most malaria-carrying mosquitoes bite at night. Thus ITNs have been proven to reduce malaria infection and death rates by forming both a physical barrier against mosquitoes and, in the words of the World Health Organisation (WHO) ‘generating a chemical halo’ around the bed, repelling and killing mosquitoes. However, for people in rural Africa, bednets are hard to get hold of. In these areas, access is often restricted to those with money to buy them from urban centres, or to those taking part in isolated research projects and localised bednet programmes.
Spread of tuberculosis relentless in Zambia, AIDS responsible
The spread of tuberculosis has been relentless in Zambia, southern Africa in the last thirty seven years and the trend continues to date. This disturbing fact was published recently in the South African Journal of Medicine by a group of Zambian doctors led by Dr. Mwaba, working together with doctors from London. The study reviewed official health records of TB cases reported throughout the country between January 1, 1964 to December 31, 2000.
Further details: /newsletter/id/29722
tac holds international day of protest
The South African AIDS advocacy group Treatment Action Campaign held an international day of protest on April 24 against the South African government's handling of the AIDS epidemic, demanding that the government improve access to antiretroviral drugs.
THE COST OF HIV PREVENTION AND TREATMENT INTERVENTIONS IN SOUTH AFRICA
What would be the cost of introducing AIDS-related prevention and treatment programmes in South Africa? This paper, produced by the Centre for Social Science Research (CSSR) at the University of Cape Town, attempts to answer this question by combining detailed information about the costs of implementing several interventions with demographic projections of their impact. Information about prices, wages and other cost components is drawn from a range of primary and secondary sources.
THE HIGH COSTS OF PRIVATE HEALTH in South Africa
Government attempts over the past five years to get private medical schemes to take care of more South Africans have failed as high costs have generally precluded those earning less than R5 000 from joining private schemes. Medical inflation has outpaced overall inflation by around 5% every year, and this has virtually nullified regulations introduced from January 1999 aimed at opening up the private sector.