Scientists and activists at South Africa's first national AIDS conference, which drew to a close on August 6, urged the government to roll out rapid drug treatment for millions of South Africans dying from the disease. "The message is: don't wait. You've got to do something, and you have got to do it now," Salim Abdool Karim, scientific chair of the conference, told Reuters. "This is not an attack on the government. This is scientific fact." The four-day conference was a watershed in South Africa's public debate on AIDS policy, which is dominated by angry efforts to persuade the government to launch a national treatment program with antiretroviral drugs, which many scientists say represent the only way to avoid catastrophe.
Equity in Health
south african AIDS Meeting Ends with Call for Treatment
WHO Looks to Ease Access to AIDS Drugs
The World Health Organisation announced last month that it will create a new model to buy antiretroviral AIDS drugs in hopes of dramatically speeding distribution and reducing the cost of the life-saving medication. The plan comes from collaboration among tuberculosis experts, foremost among them the new WHO director general, Jong-wook Lee. That program, called the TB Drug Facility, purchases drugs in bulk on behalf of countries and then oversees the distribution.
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zambian GOVERNMENT IMPLEMENTS CRITERIA FOR DISTRIBUTION OF FREE ARV'S
The Zambian government has instituted criteria to determine which of the country's 200,000 HIV/AIDS patients will have access to free antiretroviral drug treatment, Xinhua News Agency reports. Under the new guidelines, HIV-positive people wishing to access the drugs must undergo voluntary HIV testing and counselling as well as a clinical test to determine their viral load.
zimbabwean AIDS PREVALENCE NOT DOWN, SAY EXPERTS
Figures released by the government last week showing a drop in the number of Zimbabweans infected by HIV/AIDS were only a correction of flawed estimates from previous surveys and did not mean the prevalence of the disease was declining in the country, HIV/AIDS experts said.
Aid agency to tackle disease in the developing world
The quest for drugs to fight the world's most neglected tropical infectious diseases gained fresh momentum with the formal launch of the "drugs for neglected diseases" initiative this week. Médecins Sans Frontières has teamed up with five international public organisations to promote affordable and effective drugs against leishmaniasis, human African trypanosomiasis, and Chagas' disease, among other infections that affect millions of people across Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
Aids protest poised to resume in South Africa
Aids activists are angry about the government's indecision over providing anti-Aids drugs and look set to resume their civil disobedience campaign. A final decision about returning to civil disobedience could be made at the Treatment Action Campaign's (TAC) national congress, which is to be held in Durban within the next two weeks. Provincial meetings ahead of the congress have already voted overwhelmingly in favour of a return to the disobedience campaign, which was suspended in April after a meeting between TAC representatives and Deputy President Jacob Zuma.
Applying an equity lens to child health and mortality: more of the same is not enough
Gaps in child mortality between rich and poor countries are unacceptably wide and in some areas are becoming wider, as are the gaps between wealthy and poor children within most countries. Poor children are more likely than their better-off peers to be exposed to health risks, and they have less resistance to disease because of undernutrition and other hazards typical in poor communities. Regular monitoring of inequities and use of the resulting information for education, advocacy, and increased accountability among the general public and decision makers is urgently needed, but will not be sufficient. Equity must be a priority in the design of child survival interventions and delivery strategies, and mechanisms to ensure accountability at national and international levels must be developed.
creative routes used to supply arv's
Not-for-profit groups and some individuals are using "creative routes" to provide antiretroviral drugs to HIV-positive people in developing countries, the New York Times reports. Some organisations channel unused medications from U.S. patients who have changed medications, taken a break from treatment or died to patients in developing countries, and other organisations purchase low-cost generic versions of the drugs in other countries and import them, sometimes illegally, into neighbouring countries.
Data collection an effective weapon in anti-HIV/AIDS arsenal in Swaziland
A new information gathering programme will soon provide an essential database of medical and other humanitarian needs in the agricultural heart of Swaziland to fill gaps in the national records and bring much needed insight into how to best counter the spread of HIV/AIDS.
Frustration over delay in namibian drug roll-out
Frustration is mounting among activists over the Namibian government's delay in providing anti-AIDS drugs to its HIV-positive citizens. The government announced in April this year that it had budgeted US $10.9 million for the purchase of antiretroviral (ARV) drugs for HIV-positive people. But while the health ministry has on numerous occasions indicated their intention to provide treatment, this had not been translated into action, activists told PlusNews.