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.
Equity and HIV/AIDS
Forcing patients to pay for AIDS care undermines treatment success
MSF ; via Procaare
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.
Global Fund withdraws support for loveLife in South Africa
The Global Fund to fight HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has pulled the plug on financing loveLife, a controversial South African youth-targeted HIV/AIDS campaign. In a statement the Global Fund board said it had found that loveLife "was deemed to not have sufficiently addressed weaknesses in its implementation". Global Fund spokesman Jon Liden said it had become difficult to measure how the prevention campaign was contributing to the reduction of HIV/AIDS among young people.
New drugs urgently needed in Africa
The lack of newer AIDS drugs in Africa could jeopardise the lives of people already receiving the treatment, medical humanitarian organisation Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) has warned. With many countries on the continent embarking on national programmes to provide antiretrovirals (ARVs), the first-line drug regimen has become cheaper and widely available. But as resistance to the basic drugs inevitably builds up, there will be a need for a second generation of drugs within a few years.