The market for HIV drugs is in global decline as doctors use new treatments to avoid patient over-exposure to drugs, and market saturation is now occurring, according the market research organisation Datamonitor. The market analysts say the year-on-year world growth in the market for HIV antiretroviral drugs will decrease from 19 per cent in 2003 to five per cent by 2010. Meanwhile, UK charity ActionAid has warned the drug industry of a backlash. "Investors are starting to realise that ethical issues count," said the charity's Simon Wright. "Pharmaceuticals must act to allow price competition with generic manufacturers. They should release their patents in very poor countries. If they don't, they deserve to become the new pariahs of the business world."
The recent outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in China and now across the world has led doctors to issue warnings to people living with HIV and Aids. Authorities in Asia and Australia are considering forcible detention of people showing visible symptoms of the disease which, as we went to press, has infected over 2,400 people in 18 different countries and already killed over 100 people including the Italian doctor who first identified the virus. Chinese scientists say that people with compromised immune systems should be very aware of shortness of breath, breathing difficulties, high fevers and a dry cough.
A 33-year-old male prostitute in Los Angeles has been sentenced to 10 years in prison. The charges against him were increased from misdemeanour to felony level after it became known that he was HIV positive. LA County judge John Doyle said: "His background is grim, his prospects are even more grim and every time he gets out of prison he gets back on the street and renders someone else susceptible to HIV." The case follows many other prison sentences imposed on people in the USA who do not declare their HIV status before they have sex.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is calling for the withdrawal of a new Aids information campaign in Florida which tells people to "Answer Jesus' call" to deal with HIV. A pamphlet, entitled 'A Christian Response to Aids', is endorsed by the Florida Department of Health and quotes Biblical passages throughout. Recently in the US, sexual abstinence campaigns have been heavily funded at a federal and state level in an effort to persuade people to stop having sex. Funding has been withdrawn from groups advocating abortion or even condom use.
Brazil is to build three plants to manufacture cheap anti-HIV drugs in Africa, according to the African Union. The AU's commission chairman Amara Essy told reporters last month that the 53-member organisation has reached agreement with Brazil to build three factories - one in the north, another in the centre and one in southern Africa. Brazil has lead the way in patent-busting and producing cheap copies of anti-HIV drugs, and has incurred US and drug company wrath at the World Trade Organisation as a result.
Japan has one of the lowest HIV rates in the world (just 12,000 cases, according to UNAIDS). But it also has one of the globe's biggest sex industries, worth an estimated $13 billion a year. Now Health Ministry officials are worried about a possible big spread of the disease among the young who account for nearly 60 per cent of new infections. Condom usage is declining in the country and ignorance about HIV, coupled with a traditional lack of assertiveness by women, is believed to be driving up the incidence of new cases of HIV in Japan. "A woman initiating the issue of HIV with her partners and asking them to use condoms would be rude and challenging," said Yasuko Muramatsu, professor of women's studies at Tokyo's Gakugei University.
