Compiled by Martin Flynn
G8 deal gives hope to millions
G8 leaders have pledged universal access to HIV treatments for all who need
them by 2010.
The agreement, overshadowed by the London bombings, promised to cancel debt
to the 18 poorest nations and boost aid from the eight richest countries to
$50 billion in the next five years.
Campaigners are now looking for the world’s richest countries to deliver
the long-promised full funding to the Global Fund to Fight Aids, TB and Malaria
at the fund’s Replenishment conference in September.
A senior official for the Department for International Development (DFID)
said the UK would pay its “full share” in September. “We
want to see an extremely successful Global Fund. We are fully committed to
it being
a great success,” she added. The Fund has now put 220,000 people worldwide
on antiretroviral therapies (ARVs) and other programmes have raised this figure
to 700,000. But it falls short of the World Health Organisation (WHO) commitment
to get three million people on treatment by the end of 2005.
WHO director, Dr Jim Kim, told the All Party Parliamentary Group on Aids:
“The ‘3 by 5’ target [to supply ARVs to three million people
in low- and middle-income countries by the end of 2005] gave hope and set
goals. Universal access is the right goal at the right time. A few years ago
people were saying treatment was not possible in poor countries.” The
US Global Aids Alliance was quick to point out that only seven per cent of
the aid promised by President Bush at Gleneagles was new money. The Make Poverty
History Campaign said that G8 leaders “offered warm words [on aid] but
little concrete commitments.”
Yusef Azad, director of policy and campaigns at the National Aids Trust, welcomed
the G8 deal but asked for more investment in HIV vaccines and microbicides.
“HIV kills 6,300 people in sub-Saharan Africa every day. Seventy five
per cent of HIV positive young people there are female and the development
of a microbicide gel could enable vulnerable women to protect themselves.”
International HIV/Aids Alliance director Alvaro Bermajo said the Global Fund
still faced a multi
million dollar funding gap after four years of promises from the G8.
“We also need to be clear what universal access to treatments means.
It must mean access to
quality treatment and care, together with a comprehensive range of HIV prevention
services; treatment alone will fail.” Simon Wright, spokesman for the
Stop Aids Campaign at Gleneagles (see Speak Up, page 55), said the G8 were
to be congratulated for responding to the global movement for HIV treatment.
“However, the additional aid that they are announcing may not be sufficient
or fast enough,” he warned.
Premier footballers join African Aids fight
Manchester City’s goalkeeper David James (pictured far left) joined
young Malawians at the Civo stadium, Lilongwe, last month to campaign for
the rights of HIV positive people. Along with Gary Neville and Rio Ferdinand
from Manchester United, James joined a Department for International Development
(DFID) campaign to urge young people to step up the fight against HIV and
Aids, a pandemic that kills 10 people an hour in the southern African state.
HIV positive in US tops hits new high
“A seven-figure warning light that blinks failure” is how the
San Francisco Chronicle described news that more than a million Americans
are now living with HIV/Aids. This is the highest figure since the US epidemic
began. The figure is partly the result of people living longer with ARVs,
partly due to better data collection. But the main cause is the 40,000 new
infections each year. This figure has remained constant for the past decade;
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention aim to reduce the figure to
20,000 a year.African Americans account for over 50 per cent of all new infections,
with a surge in poor areas in the south and the northeast. Latinos account
for a further 15 per cent and three-quarters are male.
As in the UK, part of the problem appears to lie with the 25 per cent of those
infected who remain undiagnosed and go on to infect others. Part of the increase
has been attributed to the popularity of the illegal party drug crystal meth
and the failure of new generations to take on the safe sex message.
The Chronicle said: “This country has become very good at treating the
sick. But doctors and health care experts aren’t nearly as good at preventing
infection.”
TAC demo ends in shoot-out
Forty people were injured and ten treated for gunshot wounds on
14 July after South African police fired on protesters at the Frontier Hospital
in Queenstown in the Eastern Cape.
Police fired rubber bullets and smoke grenades and charged the protestors
with truncheons when they invaded the hospital demanding access to antiretroviral
drugs.
“It was a peaceful protest in a hospital,” said Treatment Action
Campaign (TAC) deputy chairman Sipho Mthati. “The police started beating
people then shooting at them.” Recent figures show
more than 6.5 million of South Africa’s 47 million population is HIV
positive.
HIV ‘out of control’ in India
The HIV epidemic is ‘out of control’ in India, according
to the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria. The fund’s
executive director Professor Richard Feachem said official statistics were
wrong
and India’s epidemic was now outstripping that of South Africa with
over eight million HIV infections. Official Indian figures put the total at
5.1 million. His comments provoked outrage in India, particularly among supporters
of the ultra nationalist Hindu BJP party, until recently the ruling party
in India.“We are tired of foreigners constantly bombarding us with inflated
statistics, telling us that we are faced with an HIV/Aids epidemic when there
are many other more serious and pressing issues to deal with in this country,”
said BP Singhal, former police official and parliamentarian.
SY Quraishi, director of India’s National AIDS Control Organisation,
said the claims were “nonsense”.
Feachem also provoked outrage by suggesting the epidemic was likely to spread
more rapidly among India’s majority Hindu population than among the
Muslims where there is a tradition of male circumcision. “This is obnoxious,”
said a furious Singhal. “Has there been any study done on the spread
of HIV/Aids within the different religious communities in India? We are not
going to tolerate such remarks made against Hindus.”
Another pro-Hindu organization, Jan Abhiyan, has resolved to hold demonstrations
outside the offices of UNAIDS until Feachem publicly apologises unconditionally
to all Hindus.Meanwhile, despite multi-million dollar assistance, India’s
public sector is only managing to supply antiretrovirals to 5,000 people.
Cheap generic drugs manufactured in India can be more easily obtained in South
Africa. So far the Indian government has only supplied free antiretrovirals
to the country’s top civil servants who are living with HIV.
Generic antiretrovirals are now available at less than $1 per patient per
day but India’s poorest with HIV still cannot afford them.
Gay HIV positive actor denied US visa
South American actor and comedian Fernando Pena, 42,
(pictured) was denied a visa to travel to the US because he is HIV positive.
Pena said he previously had a visa to enter the US for life but was subjected
to a lengthy interrogation last month before he was denied entry.
words
“HIV and Aids will be the
centrepiece of the UK’s presidency of the G8 and the EU.”
A Department for International Development spokesman.
“We will work to meet the financing needs for HIV/Aids, including the
replenishment this year of the Global Fund to Fight Aids, TB and Malaria.”
The G8 Gleneagles final communiqué.
“What we are faced with is multiple epidemics. We are moving into the
globalisation of the Aids epidemic.”
Dr Peter Piot, executive director of UNAIDS.
“Of the people infected with HIV, 58 per cent are women. Of the people
dying of Aids, 58 per cent are women. It is time to say enough!”
Graca Machel, wife of Nelson Mandela.
“Just as it’s better for gays to get Aids than use condoms, it’s
better for a woman to get cancer than have sex before marriage. It’s
honour killing on the instalment plan.”
Katha Pollitt, from The Nation, criticising the warped logic of US
Christian conservatives.
“It’s simply nonsense to suggest that a third of UK aid is ‘phantom’”
Hilary Benn MP, International Development Secretary.
“Thank you for putting the elephant on the table.”
UNAIDS director Dr Jim Kim on the Labour Party’s commitment
to universal ARV access which galvanised the G8 leaders at Gleneagles.
