The
meeting will tackle problems such as a shrinking donor base caused by heightened
safety standards, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent
Societies said in a statement Friday.
News (Updated April 3,
2004)
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Fri Apr 2, 8:54 AM ET
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BEIJING (AFP) - A worldwide shortage of safe blood for transfusions will top the agenda when experts from around the globe gather in China's capital Saturday for a five-day conference, the Red Cross warned.
The
meeting will tackle problems such as a shrinking donor base caused by heightened
safety standards, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent
Societies said in a statement Friday.
The conference, co-sponsored by the Red Cross and the World Health Organization , takes place in a country that has had its own severe problems with a safe blood donor system.
Parts of China have seen massive outbreaks of HIV/AIDS due to previously unsafe systems for collecting blood.
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Thu Apr 1,11:48 AM ET
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JOHANNESBURG (AFP) - South African health authorities began distributing free anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs to HIV/AIDS patients in the country's richest province of Gauteng, a health department spokesman revealed.
Simon Zwane said the programme kicked off in five major hospitals including the mammoth Chris Hani Baragwanath in the southwestern township of Soweto and Johannesburg General Hospital.
"We are sure that the roll-out has started smoothly in all five hospitals," Zwane told the SAPA news agency on Thursday.
The department hopes to treat about 100 new cases of HIV/AIDS each week, and is targeting treating a total of some 10,000 people at 23 sites in Gauteng, where Johannesburg and Pretoria are located, by next year.
The UNAIDS agency estimates that South Africa had 5.3 million people infected with HIV and AIDS at the end of 2002 -- the highest number in the world.
In mid-November, South Africa's cabinet approved the outline of a plan to provide ARVs for those infected with HIV/AIDS, after several court battles between government and AIDS lobby groups, who wanted free treatment for all sufferers.
Earlier this month, the influential Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) threatened to go to court again in an effort to get the government -- who in the past voiced suspicion over the safety of ARV treatment -- to speed up the roll-out of ARV's.
Mark Heywood, a spokesman for the TAC, told AFP the demand had been dropped "for the time being" following Thursday's roll-out of ARVs in Gauteng.
"We dropped the court action to get drugs to be supplied to facilities that are ready to do so for the time being," said Heywood.
"We welcome today's roll-out and urge the Gauteng government to do more to make sure that sites are ready to start treating more people."
"At the moment the numbers are far too small," Heywood said.
Gauteng is the third province to provide ARV treatment after the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal provinces.
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Wed Mar 31, 1:23 PM ET
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DAKAR (AFP) - Only three percent of the 3.9 million AIDS patients in Africa who could benefit from anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs) have access to them, delegates at a forum were told.
Only
150,000 HIV and AIDS patients around the continent benefit from anti-retroviral
drugs, according to a study conducted by the Accelerating Access Initiative
(AAI), a partnership between the United Nations and six pharmaceutical
laboratories.
According to Senegal's Health Minister Issa Mbaye Samb, the price of ARVs has plunged "on average by 85 percent in the past two years," making the drugs more accessible.
Another change on the African health map easing access to ARVs is the fact that 40 sub-Saharan African countries now have national strategies to fight HIV/AIDS.
But despite the changes, the number of HIV-positive sub-Saharan Africans with access to ARVs remains minuscule at two percent, compared with 84 percent in Latin America, according to AAI.
"People said it was too expensive, too complex, so it was difficult to install in these countries," said Joep Lange, head of the group Pharm Access International.
"In a lot of African countries, governments are not functional and very poor, so how could you expect something to work?" he asked.
Delegates from 19 countries in Africa, the Americas and Europe took part in the forum, which ended Wednesday.
Lange called the drugs' arrival on the African market as a "revolution" that had clearly prolonged patients' lives.
"Many patients can't even afford to eat, let along pay for expensive treatments," said Papa Salif Sow, a Senegalese researcher.
Pharm Access and co-organizer Roche, a Swiss maker of ARVs, stressed that countries such as Senegal, Botswana and Uganda had made great strides towards improving access to the drugs.
In Senegal, where access to the drugs has been free since January, 50 patients have received treatment in a cooperation project with Roche that began nearly three years ago, Sow said, adding: "The patients are doing very well now."
Ivory Coast, Kenya and Uganda are also benefitting from the project.
Sow said that the UN World Health Organization's goal of delivering ARVs to three million people in developing countries by the end of 2005 cannot be attained without further training of medical personnel and increased AIDS testing.
Some 90 percent of people in the world do not know their HIV status, he noted.
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Fri Apr 2,12:10 PM ET
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HARARE (AFP) - Around 70 percent of patients admitted to Zimbabwe's hospitals suffer from HIV and AIDS -related illnesses, a health expert said.
"It is also shocking to note that 33 percent of pregnant women in the country are infected with HIV," Rangarirai Chiteure of the non-governmental Zimbabwe Aids Prevention and Support Network told New ZIANA news agency.
The government, which has for the past year administered anti-AIDS drug Nevirapine to pregnant women to reduce HIV transmission to babies, plans to introduce free anti-retroviral drugs to tens of thousands of HIV-infected people this month.
With about 24.6 percent of its adult population infected with HIV or AIDS, the southern African country has one of the world's highest prevalence rates. AIDS kills an estimated 3,000 people in the country weekly.
Thu 1 April, 2004 00:09
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science CorrespondentWASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. official on Wednesday denied charges that the United States supports pharmaceutical giants in a dispute over whether the government should help provide cheaper generic AIDS drugs.
"What we are looking to do is not to avoid buying generics but to assure the quality, safety and efficacy of them," said John Lange, deputy to U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator Randall Tobias.
Lange said the United States was mainly concerned that much cheaper versions of the drugs made by two Indian companies may end up doing more harm than good if they are widely distributed.
AIDS activist groups, the international relief group Doctors Without Borders and some members of Congress have accused the U.S. government of reacting to pressure from companies that make expensive, brand-name HIV drugs.
Lange told a meeting organized by the Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS and the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington that he expected the dispute to be resolved soon.
"This is a big issue and it could undermine all the good work we are doing," said Richard Holbrooke, chief executive officer of the business coalition. "Fairly or not, it is going to become a symbol that the United States is protecting" pharmaceutical companies.
At issue are the drug cocktails that allow patients infected with the AIDS virus to lead healthy lives.
The World Health Organization and Doctors Without Borders, more commonly known as Medecins Sans Frontieres, are distributing less expensive versions made by two Indian companies -- Cipla Ltd. and Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd. -- that combine the cocktails into single pills.
The United States organized a meeting in Botswana this week to discuss whether U.S. AIDS programs should also distribute them.
Lange said the meeting reached no conclusions and said it may be difficult to assess whether the less expensive combinations controlled the AIDS virus without allowing it to evolve at low levels and eventually develop resistance to the drugs.
"If we were to purchase antiretroviral drugs that do not meet quality standards, they could build up resistance and do more harm than good," Lange told the conference.
He said the U.S. government would commit to the lowest-cost drugs available that met standards of quality.
"We don't have the data. We are going as fast as we can," Lange said.
"Normally one looks to stringent regulatory authority," he added. But in this case the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had no jurisdiction, and he said the WHO was not a regulatory body.
29 Mar 2004 04:07:45 GMT
S.Korean Red Cross rapped for tainted blood lapses |
SEOUL, March 29 (Reuters) - South Korea's Red Cross mishandled donor information and circulated blood donated by hepatitis virus carriers, infecting nine people, government auditors said on Monday.
The Board of Audit and Inspection (BAI) called on the Korea National Red Cross to punish officials responsible for shipping blood donated by hepatitis virus carriers to hospitals and pharmaceutical companies for five years up until January.A board audit conducted at the end of 2003 found that 76,677 units of blood received from donors who had been infected with the hepatitis C virus had been distributed for transfusions or research by the Red Cross, a board official said.
The South Korean chapter of the international agency also put in circulation 228 units of blood donated by 99 people who had been suspected of carrying the HIV virus, but who later tested negative for the virus that causes AIDS, the official said.
Nine people were found to have been infected with hepatitis last month after receiving blood transfusions from the Red Cross, the officials said.
South Korean Red Cross spokesman Lee Jae-sung said the problems stemmed from a change in laws in April 2000 that banned donations from people who had been infected with hepatitis. The previous law had allowed donations from people who were hepatitis-free at the time they gave blood.
It was not immediately clear if there were also cases of hepatitis infections through blood donations made before April 2000 under the earlier rules.
"We changed the rules for donation but we only acquired a system to investigate donors' disease history in May 2003," Lee said by telephone.
"The nine people infected with the hepatitis virus received blood during the period between April 1, 2000, and May 2003," he said.
One of the nine already had hepatitis before receiving the tainted transfusion, he said.
"We take full responsibility for the other eight people and plan compensation," Lee said, adding the suspect units of blood had been used up by the time last year's audit had been done.
New procedures for checking donors' medical history had made it "impossible for people who had been infected with viruses to donate their blood", he said.
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Mon Mar 29,12:22 PM ET
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PHNOM PENH, Cambodia - A Bill Gates-funded plan to test an anti-HIV drug suffered a setback Monday when a group of Cambodian sex workers refused to participate, citing a lack of insurance against potential side effects.
But the research team said it will keep trying to recruit some 960 sex workers needed for the yearlong study, expected to start in June.
The study is a joint effort by Cambodia's Health Ministry, the University of California in San Francisco and Australia's University of New South Wales.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is funding the study under a program to test the tenofovir DF drug in several nations and find out if it reduces the HIV infection risk among sexually active adults regularly exposed to the virus.
The drug is already used to treat people infected with the AIDS-causing virus. The new tests are aimed at determining if the drug can prevent infection in those who don't have HIV.
But 150 Cambodian sex workers belonging to a group called Women's Network for Unity said they'd only take part if given insurance to treat possible side effects for 30 years.
"Now I'm still beautiful, and I cannot make any joke out of my future. Who will be responsible if my health falls ill after the test?" said Ly Linda, a 32-year-old prostitute.
"No, I will not join in the test," she said to applause from colleagues meeting on Monday over the insurance issue. A banner at the meeting read: "Without life insurance, please take the drug back for trial in America."
Kimberly Page Shafer, a University of California professor who attended the meeting, said the drug's side effects are not serious, and included stomach gas and nausea. Women will be provided +medical+ care for side effects during and after the trial period, she said.
The U.S. health department says the side effects — when it's taken as an HIV treatment — range from diarrhea and rashes to liver or kidney failure.
Shafer told The Associated Press after the meeting that it was impossible to provide insurance.
"There's probably no place in the world where women in clinical trial have access to coverage for life. So I have to decide if I want to work on insurance coverage or on HIV prevention," she said.
Cambodia was chosen for the study because of its high rate of HIV infections, said Khol Vohith, a researcher at the country's National Center for HIV/AIDS and Sexually Transmitted Diseases.
Cambodia has Southeast Asia's highest HIV infection rate, though it has dropped to 2.6 percent in 2002 from 3.8 percent in 1997.
Shafer said she hoped that enough women will join the study. She wouldn't say how many have already been recruited.