Zimbabwe's National Aids Council (NAC) on Tuesday said it was only ableto provide anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs to one in every 12 HIV/AIDS patients because there is no money to buy adequate supplies. Being the result of funds raised through an aids tax on workers having to be spread out to cover other social sectors requiring support leaving little money to pay for drugs or HIV/AIDS prevention programmes, the article further describes the impact of this news.
Equity and HIV/AIDS
Zimbabwe Aids council says only one in 12 patients getting anti-retroviral drugs
SAFAIDS, 29 March 2006
Buckling: A challenging new analysis of the impact of AIDS in South Africa
Hein Marais, Centre for the Study of AIDS, South Africa
An AIDS epidemic as severe as the one plowing through South Africa will change society. But how and along what lines? "Buckling: The impact of AIDS in South Africa", a new publication by South African writer and journalist Hein Marais, tackles the question in distinctive and critical-minded fashion-and arrives at disquieting conclusions and proposes a minimum package of social adjustments that could reduce the damage.
Further details: /newsletter/id/31257
Forcing patients to pay for AIDS care undermines treatment success
MSF ; via Procaare
Having to pay for HIV/AIDS care increases the risk of treatment failure, according to new research from Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) presented this week at the International Conference on AIDS and Sexually transmitted infections in Africa (ICASA), in Abuja, Nigeria. The research revealed that in Lagos, Nigeria, among patients who had to pay for their own AIDS care, 44% had multiple treatment interruptions or took insufficient dosages due to lack of funds. The medical effects of this are extremely worrying.
International Womens Day: Womens Global Health Imperative
Stephen Lewis, UN Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa
We are disappointed and frankly outraged that gender equality and strengthening the women's machineries within the UN system are barely noted, and are not addressed as a central part of the reform agenda. Again we must ask how it can be that more than ten years after the commitment to gender parity at the Beijing Conference, the UN is still offering only token representation of women on critical committees, high level expert panels and in senior positions within the organization?
Further details: /newsletter/id/31306
Contact: clmagill@shaw.ca
Putting it together: AIDS and the Millennium Development Goals
The paper describes the effects of HIV and AIDS on each of the MDGs in turn. This approach does not attempt to capture all the interactions among these development outcome measures.
Southern Africa assessment: food security and HIV/AIDS
Institute for Security Studies (ISS), South Africa (2005)
This publication identifies HIV/AIDS and food insecurity- particularly in the rural areas- as the two most severe and interrelated humanitarian issues currently facing southern Africa. It is argued that the current situation must be contextualised as an "entangling crisis" of climatic factors, chronic poverty, the failure of economic and political governance, and the impact of HIV/AIDS on the ability of individuals to respond independently.
Expanding access to HIV prevention
AIDS Research and Therapy 2006
The expanding HIV/AIDS epidemic represents one of the greatest threats to human health and international development today, and strengthening the global response is imperative. Despite recent progress in expanding access to HIV/AIDS treatment, the world continues to severely under-invest in efforts to fight HIV/AIDS, missing a tremendous opportunity to change the course of the epidemic by bringing proven treatment and prevention interventions to scale. Nowhere is the need for an expanded response more apparent – and the potential impact greater – than in efforts to prevent the spread of new infections.
HIV/AIDS advocacy guide
By the end of 2000, over 36 million men, women and children around the world were living with HIV or AIDS and nearly 22 million had died from the disease. The same year saw an estimated 5.3 million new infections globally and 3 million deaths, the highest annual total of AIDS deaths ever. Currently, there are 15,000 new infections every day. AIDS is now the number one killer in Africa. This Guide, which is intended to supplement IPPF’s Advocacy Guide, describes what advocacy can do, often at little cost, in the prevention of HIV/AIDS.
On a never-ending waiting list: Toward equitable access to anti-retroviral treatment? Experiences from Zambia
Universal access to anti-retroviral (ARV) medication for HIV/AIDS is the clarion call of the WHO/UNAIDS 3 by 5 Initiative. Treatment coverage, however, remains highly uneven. This sharpens the question of who exactly is accessing ARVs and whether access is challenging inequality or reinforcing it. Issues of distributive justice have long been debated in health policy, but the practical challenges of ARV distribution are relatively new. In exploring what a more equitable process of ARV distribution could involve, this article draws on a human rights framework using case study material from Zambia.
Scaling-up ART and the health system in southern Africa
This note, prepared for a UNAIDS workshop on Vulnerability and AIDS, provides a number of observations and opinions on the feasibility of scaling up anti-retroviral treatment (ART) in sub-Saharan Africa. The document reviews lessons learned from various hospitals and health centres delivering ART in southern Africa, and highlights considerable human resource constraints. For instance, in South Africa, it is estimated that for every 500 ART patients, they need as many as 10 permanent staff. Other pilots have similar staff/patient ratios.