WHO, UNAIDS program to bring medicine to three million AIDS sufferers by 2005
WASHINGTON
The United Nations on December 1 asked for help in an ambitious scheme to bring medication to three million poor HIV patients by 2005, as developing nations sought to reduce the stigma of the disease on World AIDS Day.
In Geneva, the World Health Organization and UNAIDS pleaded for assistance with the so-called "three by five" initiative, expected to cost about US$5.5 billion. Even achieved, the plan would still only aid about half of the people with HIV who are poor and in need.
"WHO estimates that six million people worldwide are in immediate need of AIDS treatment. This strategy outlines the steps needed to deliver treatment to half of them within two years," the agencies said.
Said Peter Piot, UNAIDS executive director: "We firmly believe that we stand no chance of halting this epidemic unless we dramatically scale up access to HIV care. Treatment and prevention are the two pillars of a truly effective comprehensive AIDS strategy."
"We know what to do but what we urgently need now are the resources to do it," said WHO director general Lee Jong-wook, noting the pandemic was perhaps "the toughest health assignment the world has ever faced." "The lives of millions of people are at stake. This strategy demands massive and unconventional efforts to make sure they stay alive."
The plan got a boost when international medical charity Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF, or Doctors without Borders), announced in Nairobi that an Indian drug manufacturer had slashed by half the cost of one of the most effective treatments used to fight AIDS.
Drugmaker Cipla will offer Triomune-which combines three generic medications in one pill taken twice a day-for US$40 per patient per year or half the current price, MSF spokesman Weger Wentholt said.
Antiretroviral drugs prevent the onset of full-blown AIDS in people infected with HIV and make such infections manageable. For lack of such drugs, three million people died this year, akin to a fully loaded Boeing 747 jumbo jet crashing about every 90 minutes. The equivalent patented drugs-only available in three separate pills-cost about US$700 per patient per year.
Unlike earlier price-reduction deals, the latest offer is not restricted to specific countries. MSF said hundreds of thousands of people will benefit in the short term and will do much to help the "three by five" program.
Deliver
Activists in the United States called on President George Bush to live up to his promise to spend 15 billion dollars fighting the disease over five years. Scores of religious leaders wrote an open letter to Bush and Treasury Secretary John Snow, calling on the government to deliver the money promised under the scheme and to offer great debt relief for countries hardest-hit by AIDS.
The proposal, made by Bush in his annual address to Congress in January, called for US$3 billion to be spent in the first year. But in his budget request, Bush only asked for US$2 billion, although Congress bumped up the figure to US$2.4 billion.
Much of the money that the United Nations could raise would have to go to Africa, home to three-quarters of HIV /AIDS victims. But the WHO and UNAIDS also point to China, India, Russia, and Indonesia as major countries that could follow African nations-where most of the five million new infections this year were recorded-down the path to disaster.
The agencies estimated that by the end of this year, 40 million people would be living with aids or the virus that causes it. Their report warned that official indifference, denial, social taboo and discrimination enabled hiv to leap out of "risk" groups such as prostitutes and intravenous drug users and enter the population mainstream.
In India, the government unveiled a program to provide free HIV medication to some of its 4.58 million people with the disease.
"We have to educate people to fight it and prevent its menace. We cannot be proud of the fact that India is the second largest country suffering from AIDS," said popular Hindi-language star Fardeen Khan.
In Pakistan, where the infection rate is low but risks are high, doctors and health workers held a candlelit vigil and parades in the port city of Karachi. Saudi Arabia, which traditionally shuns open discussion of the disease, acknowledged that it had 6,787 cases of HIV or AIDS-nearly five times higher than the last time the tally was reported, in August 2002.
But a combative, conservative tone was struck by the Vatican, which called on governments to reject antiHIV campaigns "that encourage immoral hedonistic lifestyles and behavior, and help spread AIDS." Chastity remains the best protection against HIV, the Holy See's health minister, Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan, said.
AFP
