AIDS campaigners say that the billions of dollars pledged to fight the killer disease in Africa are not enough to subdue the pandemic, and that a landmark deal last month on access to generic drugs falls far short of the needs of the devastated continent.
Activists, speaking ahead of Africa's 13th International Conference on HIV/AIDS and Sexually Transmitted Diseases, which starts in Nairobi tomorrow, welcomed the agreement at the WTO in Geneva late last month to make it easier for poor countries to buy cheap versions of brand-name medicines, but said major problems remained.
More than three million people -- 600,000 of them children -- died of AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa last year, according to UN figures, and the future looks bleak, with life expectancy tumbling and men and women in their 30s and 40s being wiped out, leaving frail grandparents to care for the children.
The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria expects to disburse close to US$5 billion during 2002-2004, and US President George W. Bush has pledged US$15 billion to fight AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean over the next five years.
But Jonathan Berger, a South African researcher at the AIDS Law Project, based at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, said the Geneva deal still left poor importing countries, which could not make their own drugs, at the mercy of richer exporting countries.
"It still requires that compulsory licences must be issued in both importing and exporting countries. The problem is that even when a country which desperately needs the drugs issues a compulsory licence to import them, it is up to the exporting country to do the same," he said.
"In many countries with a capability to manufacture generic drugs and export them, their patent laws may not provide for export of products under compulsory licenses, or may not allow for such licenses to be issued, or the political will may not exist."
Rwanda's secretary of state in charge of the prevention of AIDS, Innocent Nyaruhirira, said access to anti-retroviral drugs would draw people to clinics.
"When there is no motivation, people are not interested in being tested or going for counselling," he noted.
Currently, anti-AIDS treatment in Rwanda costs around US$35 per month, against US$700 in 1999.
"But the cost remains too high," he said, underscoring the poverty of a continent where many people exist on less than US$1 a day.
But Kenya Coalition for Access to Essential Medicines spokeswoman Beryl Leach said the Geneva agreement would make it difficult for developing nations to promote their own pharmaceutical industries and manufacture generic drugs.
In Zimbabwe, where 2,500 people are reported to be dying of AIDS every week, health professionals and AIDS activists said the Geneva deal was welcome, but might not be effective if other factors affecting poor countries were not addressed, such as shortages of health workers, and provision of clean water and electricity.
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr yesterday vowed that those behind bogus flood control projects would be arrested before Christmas, days after deadly back-to-back typhoons left swathes of the country underwater. Scores of construction firm owners, government officials and lawmakers — including Marcos’ cousin congressman — have been accused of pocketing funds for substandard or so-called “ghost” infrastructure projects. The Philippine Department of Finance has estimated the nation’s economy lost up to 118.5 billion pesos (US$2 billion) since 2023 due to corruption in flood control projects. Criminal cases against most of the people implicated are nearly complete, Marcos told reporters. “We don’t file cases for
Ecuadorans are today to vote on whether to allow the return of foreign military bases and the drafting of a new constitution that could give the country’s president more power. Voters are to decide on the presence of foreign military bases, which have been banned on Ecuadoran soil since 2008. A “yes” vote would likely bring the return of the US military to the Manta air base on the Pacific coast — once a hub for US anti-drug operations. Other questions concern ending public funding for political parties, reducing the number of lawmakers and creating an elected body that would
A feud has broken out between the top leaders of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party on whether to maintain close ties with Russia. The AfD leader Alice Weidel this week slammed planned visits to Russia by some party lawmakers, while coleader Tino Chrupalla voiced a defense of Russian President Vladimir Putin. The unusual split comes at a time when mainstream politicians have accused the anti-immigration AfD of acting as stooges for the Kremlin and even spying for Russia. The row has also erupted in a year in which the AfD is flying high, often polling above the record 20 percent it
‘ATTACK ON CIVILIZATION’: The culture ministry released drawings of six missing statues representing the Roman goddess of Venus, the tallest of which was 40cm Investigators believe that the theft of several ancient statues dating back to the Roman era from Syria’s national museum was likely the work of an individual, not an organized gang, officials said on Wednesday. The National Museum of Damascus was closed after the heist was discovered early on Monday. The museum had reopened in January as the country recovers from a 14-year civil war and the fall of the 54-year al-Assad dynasty last year. On Wednesday, a security vehicle was parked outside the main gate of the museum in central Damascus while security guards stood nearby. People were not allowed in because
RSS