Compiled by Chris O’Connor and Rebecca Holman
Aids care dealt major blow in tsunami hit-regions
Aids activists in South East Asia are in a race against time to get supplies
of antiretrovirals to HIV positive survivors of the tsunami disaster.
Activists mobilised as UNAIDS warned that the tidal wave and floods had dealt
a devastating blow to HIV treatment, care and prevention in hardest-hit regions.
Hundreds of coastal communities were destroyed in southern Indian states,
including Tamil Nadu which has the highest rate of HIV infections in India.
Thailand, which has more than one million people with HIV and Aids, suffered
huge loss of life and infrastructure in coastal resorts.
Dr Suman Mehta, associate director, UNAIDS Asia Pacific division, said: “Social
services have been immensely affected with destruction of infrastructures
and supplies and equipment.
“The tragic deaths of many doctors, nurses and health workers will have
an impact on HIV/Aids prevention and care.”
Meanwhile, the Thai Network of People with HIV and Aids (TNP+) has led a mercy
mission with Médicins Sans Frontiéres (MSF) to deliver antiretrovirals
to the worst-hit southern regions of Thailand.
Paul Cawthorne, an MSF activist, said “TNP+ was trying to contact as
many of their friends as possible. A small group of their people are down
in the area worst affected, trying to meet with individuals devastated by
the tsunami.
“They are taking the ARV drugs because we’ve got reports that
people have lost everything, including their drugs.”
Beth Mange Watts of the World Health Organisation, told PN: “The most
important thing is to assess the situation to make sure that there is no break
in treatment for those who need it.”
Dr Metha was confident the crisis would not affect long term funding to the
region: “We believe that once the emergency situation has stabilised,
a portion of the fresh funds will be utilized for HIV/Aids prevention and
care.”
“It has been learned from experience that such terrible circumstances
will increase the vulnerability of affected populations to HIV/Aids. Young
people who have lost family and community guidance are more likely to engage
in risky behaviour. Impoverished women and girls could be forced to exchange
sex for survival,” she added.
TNP+ has set up a fund to help HIV positive survivors of the disaster in Thailand.
Email Paul Cawthorne on msfbbkk@asianet.co.th
Malawi plans to triple numbers on HIV treatment
Malawi is hoping a $14 million Global Fund grant will allow them to treble
the number of people receiving HIV drugs by this summer.
Close to a million people in Malawi - around 14 per cent the adult population
- are living with HIV and Aids, yet just 9,500 are enrolled on the government
treatment programme.
The grant is part of the $41 million committed to Malawi over two years by
the Global Fund to Fight Aids, TB and Malaria.
Malawi has particular problems with its health and public service infrastructure.
Many of the country’s doctors, nurses, teachers and public servants
have died from the Aids epidemic, making ARV roll-out particularly problematic.
Biswick Mwale, head of the national Aids commission, told Agence France-Presse
the funds could bring about a threefold increase in the number of people on
anti-Aids treatment by July.
At the end of the last year, UN special envoy Stephen Lewis, praised the Malawian
government for its efforts to roll out HIV treatments.
During a visit to check progress, Lewis predicted the country would easily
meet its WHO 3x5 target of 44,000 on ARVs by July 2005 and 80,000 by the end
of the year.
Lewis said the only barrier to hitting its target was the poor capacity of
its health services and the supply of ARVs.
The UK’s Department for International Development has committed $100m
to support efforts to help hospitals and clinics recruit and retain staff
with bonuses.
Brazil to defy patents by copying Aids drugs
Brazil is set to defy patent rules and forge ahead with making anti-HIV drugs
without the permission of the companies holding the patent.
The country has made the threat in the past but now looks set to forge ahead
with production of five new copies of antiretroviral drugs in 2005.
The Brazilian government claims that under World Trade Organisation rules
a nation can break drug patents in a national emergency.
Pedro Chequer, head of Brazil’s Aids programme, said breaking patents
on commercial antiretroviral (ARV) drugs was the only way it could keep up
its anti-Aids strategy.
“If we don’t move towards self-sufficiency, the programme will
collapse,” Chequer said.
He said the cost of foreign imported drugs had soared, from 50 per cent to
85 per cent of the total programme’s cost. He told a BBC correspondent:
“At the moment it is not easy because we are spending lots of money
on acquiring drugs from multi-nationals. That kind of situation is unsustainable.”
Brazil currently produces eight of the 15 drugs it offers in its anti-Aids
cocktail and is one of the few countries that supplies ARVs free to positive
people as part of a national programme of education and condom distribution.
Brazil’s war on the epidemic is generally regarded as highly successful,
with an estimated 600,000 Brazilians living with HIV, a figure that has remained
steady against the trend in the developing world.
The death rate from Aids has been halved since 1996 when distribution of free
anti-HIV drugs began. The World Bank back in the early 1990s predicted the
Brazilian infection rate would far exceed one million.
Mandela breaks Aids taboo over death of son
South African treatment activists have called on the ANC to make 2005 the
year of HIV prevention and treatment, following the death of Nelson Mandela’s
only surviving son from Aids-related disease.
Eighty-six-year-old Mandela broke a widespread taboo last month when he told
the world the cause of his son’s death.
Makgatho Mandela, 54, died on 6 January after being admitted to a Johannesburg
hospital in December.
The Treatment Action Campaign said Makgatho’s death was a tragic reminder
of the urgent challenges the country faced in HIV prevention and treatment.
“We urge the ANC to declare 2005 the year of HIV prevention and treatment.”
Announcing his death, Mandela said: “Let us give publicity to HIV/Aids
and not hide it, because the only way to make it appear like a normal illness
like TB, like cancer, is always to come out and to say somebody has died because
of HIV/Aids. And people will stop regarding it as something extraordinary.”
Despite the high death toll from Aids in African countries, it is still common
for people to hide the true cause of death of loved ones.
Veteran opposition leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi, of the Zulu Inkatha Freedom
Party, helped to break the silence last year when he announced that two of
his children had died from Aids-related causes.
