RIO
special
Compiled by Martin Flynn & Bruce Wainwright
Jamaica considers repeal of ‘Buggery
Act’
In
what has been called a “matter of public health,” a Jamaican parliamentary
committee has raised the issue of legalising gay sex and prostitution on the
island. Since HIV and Aids was first discovered in 1982, an estimated 25,000
Jamaicans have contracted the virus and more than 8,000 have died of Aids.
This year alone, health officials reported a 26 per cent increase in the number
of new infections.
Health authorities are concerned that the number of infections may far exceed
official figures, in a country where homophobic attacks are rife. About a
third of all Aids cases are discovered when the individual dies and two thirds
of those infected seek treatment only at the onset of full-blown Aids.
Revived interest in the debate represents a big about-turn for the Percival
Patterson administration which has refused to consider repealing the so-called
‘Buggery Act’ or hear any argument on the issue in the past.
Public health officials have long argued for the removal of laws against prostitution
and homosexuality which they say has fuelled the spread of HIV across the
Caribbean. Meanwhile, activists are concerned that a call for dialogue could
be no more than a band-aid and reaction to international pressure. “The
debate disappears when the pressure disappears,” said Gareth Mullings
of the Jamaica Forum for Lesbians, All-Sexuals and Gays: “We cannot,
on the one hand, expect to be a first class port of call for North Americans
and Europeans in our tourist industry, and on the other, be seen to brush
gross violations of human rights of sexual minorities aside as ‘part
of Jamaica’s culture’.”
UK doubles support for Global Fund
The
UK has announced it will double its contribution to the Global Fund to Fight
Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
An earlier pledge of £51 million per year for 2006 to 2007 has now been
increased to £100 million by the Department for International Development
(DfID).
Fund executive Dr Richard Feachem, said: “The UK’s increased contribution
will save hundreds of thousands of lives.” International development
secretary Hilary Benn said: “The Global Fund needs more money and we
hope other donors will also significantly increase their contributions.”
By increasing the size of the UK pledge, the amount donated by the US will
now be automatically increased, since federal law limits grants to no more
than 33 per cent of the total given to the Fund.The UK government says it
now accounts for 20 per cent of total world expenditure on the fight against
Aids and will be spending £1.5 billion on fighting HIV/Aids over the
next three years. The Global Fund has made 300 grants to 127 countries, supporting
220,000 people with HIV treatment. Around 600,000 have received TB treatments
and more than three million families have received insecticide-treated bed-nets
to prevent malaria. UK funding to UNAIDS will also increase by £8 million.
The additional money will be used to finance a Global Task Team to ensure
money going to UNAIDS, the Global Fund and the World Bank reaches the services
and individuals most in need.Meanwhile the Global Fund is fending off accusations
of nepotism and mismanagement following allegations of mismanagement made
by two employees. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has been asked to investigate.
Former staff claim contracts were issued without following proper procedures
and managers hired without a competitive screening process, allowing the wife
of executive director Richard Feachem to work on the fund’s procurement
system.
Although Fund managers believe the allegations are “overblown”,
they say they take these allegations “very seriously”.
• www.theglobalfund.org
UN says G8 summit was ‘not a breakthrough’
July’s
G8 summit of world leaders in Scotland was not a breakthrough but a disappointment,
according to UN envoy on HIV/Aids in Africa, Stephen Lewis. In a fiery
speech to the third International Aids Society (IAS) Conference on HIV Pathogenesis
and Treatment, in Rio, Lewis said G8 leaders had “offered only sonorous
words on debt and aid”. “I would argue that we got caught up in
music and the spectacle and the spin and the celebrities, and we applauded
before applause was justified,” he continued.Even though foreign aid
was doubled by the G8 leaders, there was an “unblemished record of failure”
between principle and delivery.
“I’ve spent the last four years travelling through Africa watching
people die,” Lewis declared.
Lewis defended the WHO commitment to get three million people on treatments
by 2005, which he said, had made all the difference, forced rich countries
into action and saved at least a million lives. “By setting the target
and breaking the miasma of inertia that seemed to paralyse the world, the
WHO unleashed an irreversible momentum for treatment.” “I appeal
to you all to enter the fray as activists,“ Lewis demanded of the thousands
of doctors, scientists and public health officials at the conference and called
on
everyone to fight, “the most serious problem humanity has ever faced.”
“We can subdue this epidemic,” Lewis concluded, “but it
will take the collective and uncompromising voices of principle and outrage
to make it happen.”
Big-up for Brazil
Brazil received praise for providing access to HIV treatments for all, fighting
the multinational pharmacos on HIV drug costs and opposing the trade dominance
of the US. However, it has also attracted criticism following a series of
corruption allegations against the government of President Luiz Inacio Lula
de Silva. Pictured left are José Felipe Saraiva, Brazilian minister
of health, and Dr Pedro Chequer, director of Brazil’s Aids Programme.
HIV super-strain ‘just hype’
Following the hysterical media warnings earlier this year of an explosion
of multi drug-resistant HIV among gay men in New York, it appears the aggressive
new viral strain is just an isolated case. Dr Gary Blick, of the Connecticut
HIV Task Force, told the IAS Conference that although one man had passed on
a highly resistant strain of the virus to another man at a sex party, no one
else had been infected with it and the patients involved were not rapidly
progressing to Aids, as was earlier feared. The Connecticut man’s partner
also caught the same HIV strain but is believed to be well and also not rapidly
progressing to Aids.
Pharmacos ‘making billions’
The total worldwide HIV drug market is worth billions of dollars a year, the
Rio conference heard. A pie chart produced by Roche Pharmaceuticals showed
that it had only four per cent of the global HIV drug sales, whereas GlaxoSmithKline
achieved 37 per cent of world sales, Bristol-Myers Squibb 22 per cent, Gilead
13 per cent, Abbott 14 per cent, Boehringer Ingelheim four per cent, Pfizer
three per cent, Merck two per cent and just one per cent to others including
the Indian generic manufacturers. Forbes magazine in the US predicted that
global sales from HIV drugs for Gilead could be as high as £1.33 billion
this year alone.
HIV ‘can hide away in the gut’
HIV can hide away in sanctuary sites in the body, such as the lymph nodes
and in semen, despite the success of antiretroviral treatments. Researchers
from Argentina found that HIV also hides away in the mucosal wall of the small
intestine. Dr Maria Olmos, from Buenos Aires, showed that HIV can hide from
detection in patients on antiretrovirals as well as among those not on treatments.
Even when blood samples show no viral load, HIV genetic material remains undetected
by the immune system in the gut wall. “It’s still possible for
people with undetectable viral load in the blood to still pass on HIV,”
said Dr Salim Karim of the University of KwaZulu–Natal in South Africa.
words
“We’re paying seven times more than the fixed price for
some HIV drugs.”
Dr Pedro Chequer, Brazilian Aids Programme
“One in five people at risk of HIV in the world have no access to HIV
prevention.”
Dr Helene Gayle, IAS President
“People on ARVs should only experiment with simplification or interruption
of their treatment in the context of clinical trials.”
Dr Jean-Francois Delfraissy, French Institute for Aids Research
“HIV drug resistance is not all or nothing: some drugs will infer resistance
and not others.”
Dr Deenan Pillay, UCL London
“It’s no surprise that more animal viruses are passing over to
humans. It’s happening all the time.”
Dr Amelio Telenti, University of Lausanne, Switzerland
“Drug companies have been very reluctant to invest in an HIV vaccine
and don’t see this as an area whereby profits can be made.”
Dr Sarah Rowland-Jones, UK Medical Research Council
“Not all HIV mutations are created equal and some are worse than others.”
Dr Steven Deeks, from San Francisco
