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World TB Day passed on 24 March without making much impact in the world's media.
TB kills approximately two million people a year worldwide and is the leading killer of people with HIV and Aids. The World Health Organisation (WHO) says that by 2020 another 36 million will die from the disease even though effective treatment costs less than $10 for each patient.
At a time when a new diagnostic blood test has been discovered by scientists at Oxford University, which identifies T-cell response rather than TB antibodies, the killer disease still receives little attention.
One major development which went virtually unreported last month was the vote of €200 million by the European Parliament to set up a new research and development programme into cheaper drugs for HIV, TB and malaria. The EU is hoping that businesses will provide a further €200 million to get the Fund up and running.
The EU remains uncertain how it will spend the money and co-operation with the pharmaceutical industry is just in the planning stage.
Observers are also saying that the EU Fund might well put another nail into the coffin of the Global Fund to fight Aids, TB and Malaria.
The Global Fund is under threat after a shortfall in donations and a lack of commitment from political leaders. President Bush promised an extra $1 billion to the Fund in his January State of the Union address, but nothing until 2004. The cost of the war against Iraq has put commitments to any further spending on the back burner.
British Minister for International Development, Clare Short, told the House of Commons last month that the Global Fund "is not being as well led as it might be".
"I am holding back from any further commitments until there is a more clearly targeted effort," the minister added.
Despite promised millions from the US and funding from Britain, Italy and Japan the Global Fund is believed to be running out of money.
Conservative groups in the US Congress oppose any help to programmes which support birth control or abortion.
Openly HIV positive actor dies
Jeter stunned the US film and TV community back in 1997 when he appeared on stage with his HIV pillbox at an Academy of Television Arts fundraiser and said: "We have lost innumerable and valuable human resources to this disease." Although Jeter had been living quite openly with the disease for some years, it is not known why he died. An inquest has been ordered. |
As
many as four million people in sub-Saharan Africa are facing imminent starvation,
the United Nations is forecasting.
The famines in Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Zambia are forcing up death rates in societies already laid waste by Aids, TB and Malaria.
The United Nations Children's Educational Fund (UNICEF) says that millions of women and children are particularly at risk in many southern African countries due to a fatal mixture of drought, food shortages and massive Aids epidemics.
At a time when politicians and press alike seem totally preoccupied with the war in Iraq, UNICEF executive director Carol Bellamy has made an appeal to the world not to forget the millions dying of starvation and disease in Africa.
About one in four adults in the six worst affected countries now live with HIV or Aids, UNICEF say, and the outlook for children is particularly bleak. Over two million children have lost one or more of their parents to Aids and 600,000 children under 15 are HIV positive themselves.
"This deadly combination of food shortages and HIV is having particularly devastating consequences for women and girls," the UNICEF chief said. "Women are the lifeline of these southern African communities. They put food on the table, and they're the ones that keep families going during crises.
"They've been hit hardest by HIV and they're overwhelmingly taking on the burden of caring for the young, the old, the sick and the dying.
"If we reach women, we reach their children, the whole family and the wider community. To quote UN Secretary General Kofi Annan: 'To save Africa, we must save her women'."
Meanwhile, Ghanaian academic Dr Kwaku Danso has called on the rich western nations to cancel Africa's enormous foreign debt.
"Africa owes $360 billion and pays $13.5 billion in interest per year," Dr Danso told the Miami Herald Tribune. "Africa has an Aids-related death every eight seconds and in Zambia Aids is expected to wipe out one third of the population by 2020.
"As the work force dies off, industries will face labour shortages. Teachers are dying off too and this will set back the African educational level by decades."
Meanwhile, promises from British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown and other G8 finance ministers to write off Africa's huge foreign debt burden are still to be delivered.
SA activists fight 'to death' for treatments
Achmat, along with fellow campaigners from the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), has organised a civil disobedience campaign this month culminating in a worldwide day of action across the globe on 24 April. TAC has also taken legal action against two South African government ministers, accusing them of culpable homicide for failing to use state resources to fight the Aids epidemic. TAC say the pandering to HIV denialists by the South African government has taken much of the focus away from the pharmaceutical industry's profiteering and the failure of developed countries to support the Global Fund. For details of the TAC action, visit: www.tac.org.za |
Gates
gives $60M to Microbicides
Emmy
Award winning actor Michael Jeter has died at his Hollywood home at the age of
50. The diminutive Jeter was best known for his quirky portrayal of condemned
prisoner Eduard Delacroix in 'The Green Mile' (1999), in which he played opposite
the miraculous mouse 'Mister Jingles', as well as appearing as a clown 'The Other
Mr Noodle' in TV's 'Sesame Street'.
South
African Aids activist Zackie Achmat (pictured) has sworn that even though he personally
can afford anti-HIV medications, he will not take the drugs until the government
fulfils its promise to make them available to all the five million people in the
country with Aids.