For the price of two days’ war in Iraq,
the world’s super-powers could
provide HIV drugs to everyone that needs them, argues UKC trustee Paul
Clift
A report in the paper the other week claimed evidence for
people becoming less angry and more mellow as they grow older. Don’t
you believe it. Am I the only one bucking the supposed trend?
What on earth have I to be angry about? After all, I am still here, still
alive though I was supposed to pop my clogs by 40 (never mind my age now,
it’s rude to ask). Better still, the meds I need come free, it’s
not difficult to see my consultant and the pharmacy is really helpful. I have
a small but nice place to live in and call my own and even have a few friends
prepared to put up with ‘Paul sounding off’ from time to time,
like here.
The International Aids Conference always carries its theme under the title
like some kind of political party strapline. At Bangkok it was Access for
All while this year at Toronto it was Time to Deliver. If Access for All was
being touted in 2004, why are we still clamouring for it now? Because it is
still a pipe-dream for the overwhelming majority of people living with HIV,
that’s why.
It’s okay for us; our NHS lets us forget about the cost of the ARVs
and other meds we need, along with the cost of seeing the doctor in the first
place. But ours remains, despite undergoing selective privatisation, a public
healthcare system that works on the basis of universal healthcare free at
the point of delivery.
The majority of people in most of the world are not so fortunate. A speaker
at Toronto told us about a big hospital in Lagos, Nigeria, where a significant
number of patients with HIV prescribed ARVs are forced to take DIY ‘drug
holidays’ because they can’t afford to keep taking the tablets.
They have to find around $40 a month, which sounds like peanuts until we realise
that most live on a household income of around $36 a month. So these people
are forced to stop taking the medicine every now and then while they save
up enough money to continue. And this leads to some serious consequences,
namely a 31 per cent risk of their treatment failing completely. I find this
outrageous because it is avoidable.
A highly respected figure, Dr Jim Kim, of Harvard University, feels equally
outraged. Making a similar point to most placard-waving activists, but more
soberly and with solid logic, he explains that the main objection to getting
treatment to those who need it - the cost - is a selective obstacle put there
by people and politicians who want it to be there. In other words: the money
exists but not the political will.
He points out that America alone has spent $400 billion on war in Iraq and
Afghanistan. At the moment there are not enough healthcare workers around
the world to meet the challenge of HIV and the cost of providing them would
be the same as two days of war at American prices. Bill Gates puts the cost
of ARVs needed globally at somewhere around $10bn, a tiny fraction of the
sums spent dropping bombs on people. Something has gone horribly wrong when
our so-called leaders fail to show true leadership of the sort that inspires
respect through saving lives.
So why don’t they encourage the development of public healthcare systems
which, according to Dr. Kim, are the only systems that can address the epidemic?
My personal feeling is that such systems are, by their very nature, outside
the bounds of the free market and therefore anathema to neo-conservatives
and their followers.
That sounds a bit extreme, but I recall a conversation I had many years ago
on my one and only visit to America in the mid 1980s. During a two-month journey
across the country, I stayed for a few days with a family in a comfortable
suburb of Chicago called Rolling Meadows, although it was flat as a pancake
and meadows were conspicuously absent.
My hosts were interested to hear about where I came from and were eager to
talk about life in England. But there was one taboo topic: I was actually
forbidden from talking about the NHS. Seeing as I was their guest I naturally
agreed not to flout their hospitality, but out of interest I did ask why they
forbade me from mentioning it. Their answer was, and I quote exactly: “Because
it’s one step from the Kremlin.” Never mind that it saves lives
and keeps us reasonably healthy, never mind that it provides us with ARVs
that keep us alive, it’s one step from communism, and that will never
do.
But I know which I would rather see $400 billion spent on, and it isn’t
ill-planned wars of dubious legality.
