PN AIDSIMPACT2005 
Robert Fieldhouse reports
from the 7th Aids Impact Conference in Cape Town
SA activists take on pharmacos
South African activists have launched legal actions against two pharmaceutical
companies over the licensing and pricing of HIV drugs.
The Treatments Action Campaign (TAC) is challenging Merck, Sharp and Dohme
over the pricing of its drug efavirenz (Stocrin) and its failure to issue
a voluntary licence to allow other companies to produce and distribute the
drug.
TAC has also announced action against Bristol Myers-Squibb Pharmaceuticals,
alleging they charge more for the antifungal drug amphotericin B in South
Africa than in the US or Europe.
In 2000, the TAC launched a similar action against Pfizer over the price of
its antifungal fluconazole (Diflucan) that led to Pfizer donating the drug
free of charge to over 400 of South Africa's 3,000 thousand public health
facilities and to 987 sites in 25 countries hardest hit by the epidemic. TAC
spokesman Zackie Achmat warned: “The struggle to ensure everyone has
decent healthcare access is only just beginning.”
Leading activist has heart attack
Leading South African Aids activist Zackie Achmat made an appearance at the
7th Aids Impact conference in Cape Town last month despite having a heart
attack ten days earlier. Achmat's heart attack was not thought to be related
to him being HIV positive or his HIV medication.
Achmat, chair of the Treatment Action Campaign, attended the launch of Witness
to Aids, a book by his great friend Justice Edwin Cameron, the first and only
person in South African public office to come out as HIV positive.
Achmat said: “I'm here against medical advice and here because of friendship.
While our president still does not have the courage to admit that the average
age of people in our country most affected by death from Aids is 35 years,
when academics and civil servants and former and current ANC members do not
have the courage to speak publicly about their HIV status, Edwin has had that
courage.”
Dismal progress on treatment access
Around 700,000 people in developing countries are now on antiretroviral
therapies, according to latest figures from the World Health Organisation
(WHO).
This represents less than a quarter of the WHO's 3x5 target of getting three
million on HIV drugs by 2005. And they amount to just ten per cent of the
total number of people globally who need antiretroviral treatment.
Dr Yves Souteyrand, of the WHO's HIV/Aids department in Geneva, said six months
ago only 12 developing countries had developed plans to achieve the 3x5 target.
Now 30 countries have plans in place to broaden treatment access.
In the past six months, the number of people in sub-Saharan Africa on treatment
has doubled to around 300,000.
Uganda, Kenya and Zambia have made strong progress in their treatment roll-out,
by establishing strong intra-agency partnerships. But India, Nigeria and South
Africa are still a long way off their targets. And staff shortages are also
hampering the roll-out of HIV drugs in South Africa, charities have warned.
Dr Ashraf Grimwood, of Absolute Return for Kids, said a lack of pharmacists,
dietitians and nutritionists was hampering anti-HIV drug roll-out in some
areas.
The 'brain-drain' of healthcare workers leaving for richer countries like
the UK has slowed. But the registration of foreign healthcare workers was
delaying the employment of suitably trained staff.
Current estimates suggest around 600,000 people, ten per cent of the six million
people with HIV in South Africa, require treatment right now. Yet government
figures reveal that still only 67,385 people are receiving treatments across
the public, private and mining sectors.
