News (Updated February 8,
2003)
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Mon Feb 3, 2:58 AM ET
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By BINAJ GURUBACHARYA, Associated Press Writer
KATMANDU, Nepal - About 4.2 million people are living with AIDS in South Asia and the epidemic is worsening in the region, health officials said Monday.
Lack of education and trafficking in women and children are the main reasons for the spread of the disease, health officials from eight South Asian countries and the United Nations said at a conference in Nepal's capital, Katmandu.
"There were 4.2 million people living with AIDS in South Asia in 2001 compared to 2 million in 1994. The number is growing every year and it getting worse," said Peter Piot, executive director of UNAIDS, the U.N.'s AIDS agency.
Health officials from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka took part in the two-day meeting, which started Monday.
Delegates reviewed previous commitments to combat the spread of AIDS and planned new, speeded-up strategies to fight the disease.
"Over 4 million people are living with AIDS in the region. Of them, over 1 million are young people, who account for about half of all the new infections, including a growing number of young women," said Carol Bellamy, executive director of United Nations Children's Fund.
"Communication and peer education campaigns must be stepped up to ensure that young people are armed with the facts about HIV and its prevention," she said.
Delegates also said the disease is largely being spread by migration and the cross-border trafficking of women. About 5,000 Nepalese women work as prostitutes in neighboring India, and many come home with AIDS.
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Tue Feb 4, 6:07 AM ET
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By BINAJ GURUBACHARYA, Associated Press Writer
KATMANDU, Nepal - U.N. officials Tuesday urged leaders of South Asian nations to take immediate action against AIDS in this region where 4.2 million people live with the disease, and a growing number are contracting it.
"Leaders must break the silence that denies the existence of AIDS. Leadership is needed to combat the disease in the region," said UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy at a conference on AIDS in South Asia.
UNAIDS, the U.N.'s AIDS agency, estimates there are 4.2 million people living with AIDS in South Asia and says the epidemic is worsening in the region. The number has doubled in the past seven years.
But Bellamy said that "it can be turned around."
Health officials from eight South Asian countries and the United Nations were in Nepal's capital, Katmandu, for the two-day conference on the disease.
"Actions must be taken now to prevent catastrophe later," said Peter Piot, executive director of UNAIDS.
The U.N. bodies also want the governments in the region to address issues fueling the epidemic, expand prevention and care, impose policies so that children who are vulnerable to HIV infection are given information and services to prevent infection.
Health officials from the region said lack of education and cross-border trafficking in women and children are the main reasons for the spread of the disease. About 5,000 Nepalese women work as prostitutes in neighboring India, and many come home with AIDS.
Delegates at the conference also reviewed previous commitments to combat the spread of AIDS and planned new, speeded-up strategies to fight the disease.
Health officials Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka took part in the forum, which started Monday.
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Mon Feb 3, 8:30 AM ET
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GENEVA - Donor countries must do more to help the new global fund against HIV/AIDS in its battle with the killer disease, a veteran Red Cross campaigner said Monday.
"It's an international humanitarian scandal that so few people get access to drugs," said Dr. Massimo Barra. "We need to push governments to place a higher priority on access to treatment."
Barra, who founded an Italian Red Cross care center for drug addicted HIV/AIDS sufferers in Rome two decades ago, was elected to the board of the Geneva-based Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria at its meeting last week.
He spoke at a news conference arranged by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
The board, which last week elected U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson as its president, awarded grants of US$866 million to 60 countries.
"The efforts of the fund in the next few years will get AIDS therapy to half a million people," said Barra. "But we have five million more who need it, so we'll be reaching only 10 percent."
"This is not enough," said Barra.
AIDS, TB and malaria kill an estimated 10 people per minute, or 15,000 per day, mostly in poor countries.
The new grants also will go to protect Africans from malaria and treat people infected with tuberculosis.
The fund hopes to hand out US$600 million more in grants this year, for a total of US$1.5 billion.
But after that the coffers will be empty, officials said.
"We need US$5 billion for one year," said Barra.
The fund, an independent partnership between the private sector and governments, came into existence one year ago upon the initiative of U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, with the U.S. government as its largest single donor. The aim is to avoid red tape that bogs down many government health programs.
"The fund isn't just a problem of governments," said Barra. "If people who go to the supermarket give a few cents every time, that's just as important as a government donation."
| Press Release | Source: U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs |
"Dr. Richman is an internationally recognized leader in HIV and AIDS research," said Secretary of Veterans Affairs Anthony J. Principi. "His research is directly responsible for major advances in the medical treatment of people with AIDS and HIV."
Richman, director of the Research Center for AIDS and HIV Infection at the San Diego VA and the Center for AIDS Research at the University of California, San Diego, is noted for his studies of zidovudine, or azidothymidine (AZT), the first drug approved in the United States to treat HIV. He and colleagues established the effectiveness of the drug in clinical trials in the late 1980s. Later studies by Richman revealed the emergence of AZT-resistant strains of HIV. The appreciation of the importance of HIV drug resistance and his pioneering studies of combination therapy led to the development in the 1990s of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART).
Today, Richman continues to play a major role in setting the national agenda for AIDS research and care. Recent research by Richman showed that more than three-quarters of HIV patients in the United States with a measurable viral load carry strains of the virus that are resistant to drug therapy. The study underscored the need for drug resistance testing, which helps identify which medications will be effective for a patient. Richman has also shown that HAART does not completely eradicate HIV, but leaves small reservoirs of HIV in immune cells -- even when blood tests show no trace of the virus.
Amid these findings, Richman is in the forefront of efforts to study neutralizing antibody to HIV, which may be of particular importance in the development of an AIDS vaccine.
Richman is author of more than 450 articles in the medical literature and is co-editor of the textbook Clinical Virology. He has served on the editorial board of 15 journals and is editor-in-chief of Topics in HIV Medicine and AIDS Therapy. He is an advisor to the Food and Drug Administration and the World Health Organization, and serves on the AIDS Vaccine Research Committee of the National Institutes of Health. Richman is also a member of the Executive Committee on HIV for VA's Quality Enhancement Research Initiative (QUERI).
VA established the Middleton Award in 1960 to honor William S. Middleton, MD, an educator and physician-scientist who served as VA's chief medical director from 1955 to 1963. The award is given each year to a senior VA investigator for major achievements in areas of prime importance to VA's research mission.
Source: U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs
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Mon Feb 3, 1:04 PM ET
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KIEV, Ukraine - Top U.S. diplomats from 14 former Eastern bloc countries began a two-day conference Monday to discuss efforts to reverse skyrocketing HIV/AIDS infection rates they said threaten to devastate the region's health, social, and economic systems.
Ambassador Jack Chow, Special Representative of the U.S. Secretary of State for HIV/AIDS, opened the conference by calling on the region's diplomats to marshal their efforts and share their experience to fight a "viral wildfire burning on the human population."
Although the number of people infected with HIV in the former Soviet republics is smaller than in Africa and Asia, infection rates have been doubling every year for the past three years, U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Carlos Pascual said.
With more than 400,000 cases, Ukraine has one of the highest rates of infection in the region. The total could reach 1.4 million by 2010, Pascual said. Ukraine's population is about 49 million.
Pascual praised Ukraine for acknowledging its AIDS problem and hailed government efforts to reverse the alarming trend, but warned that the disease has begun spreading beyond traditional high-risk groups. Some 19 percent of 15-to-29-year-olds are infected with HIV. The spread of infections across the social spectrum risks overwhelming health and social services and the cash-strapped government's national budget, Pascual said.
The United States considers HIV/AIDS a "global emergency" because it threatens "to erase decades of development work (and) billions of dollars of investment," causing population losses of "unprecedented scale," Chow said.
U.S. President George W. Bush announced a new US$10 billion emergency fund to fight HIV/AIDS in his State of the Union address last month and Secretary of State Colin Powell has established an Office of International Health Affairs.
The US$3.2 billion Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria established at the behest of U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan recently awarded Ukraine the first grant in the region, worth $US18.8 million over two years, according to a UN spokesman.
| Press Release | Source: Harvard Business Review |
Monday February 3, 4:33 pm ET
"Responses that are good for public health-prevention and treatment--are also good for business," writes a team of researchers from Boston University and the University of California.
The researchers calculated the financial impact of the epidemic on six corporations in South Africa and Botswana and found that the "AIDS tax" --increased medical costs, decreased productivity, and other costs associated with HIV/AIDS in the work force--was as much as 5.9% of the corporations' labor costs.
All six companies in the study would have earned positive returns on their investments--and reduced their AIDS tax by as much as 40.4%--if they had provided antiretroviral drugs at no cost to employees with HIV/AIDS, according to the mathematical model the researchers used.
The authors of "AIDS Is Your Business" are Sydney Rosen, Jonathan Simon, William MacLeod, Matthew Fox, and Donald M. Thea, all of the Boston University School of Public Health's Center for International Health, and Jeffrey R. Vincent of the University of California's Graduate School of International Relations & Pacific Studies in San Diego.
Other highlights from the February issue of Harvard Business Review:
"Why Bad Projects Are So Hard to Kill." Blind faith in new product initiatives can lead to marketplace success--or costly disaster. Isabelle Royer explains why companies need people who can pull the plug on doomed projects.
"I Was Greedy, Too." As we look at the wreckage from the 1990s, can we be sure it won't happen again? HBR senior editor Diane Coutu examines the psychology of greed.
"Negotiating the Sprit of the Deal." A shared understanding of the spirit of the deal is as vital to successful negotiations as agreeing on the letter of the deal, say Ron S. Fortgang, David A. Lax, and James K. Sebenius offer strategies for making sure social and economic contracts are mutually reinforcing.
"The Enemies of Trust." Fending off the enemies of trust--inconsistent messages and standards, tolerating incompetence, ignoring politically charged situations--must be at the top of every executive's agenda, say Robert Galford and Anne Seibold Drapeau.
"Who Needs Budgets?" There's a movement afoot to do away with budgets, and it's picking up steam. Jeremy Hope and Robin Fraser explain why some executives blame budgets for preventing companies from becoming more competitive.
"Who's Bringing You Hot Ideas--And How Are You Treating Them?" "Idea practitioners" are more important than ever to enhancing business performance. And as Thomas H. Davenport, Laurence Prusak, and H. James Wilson explain, they require some special care and feeding.
"Clueing in Customers" When a company's offerings are hard to judge, customers look for subtle indicators of quality. Leonard L. Berry and Neeli Bendapudi show how the Mayo Clinic effectively conveys a consistent message to its customers.
"HBR Case Study: A Consultant's Comeupance." In this fictional case, Robert Buday raises the perennial question of when--or even whether--outside consultants are worth having.
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Mon Feb 3, 8:27 PM ET
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Ann Rostow, Gay.com / PlanetOut.com Network
SUMMARY: Gay political groups have mixed reactions to President Bush 's proposed 2004 budget, especially in terms of AIDS spending.
The Human Rights Campaign has given the Bush Administration a pat on the back for proposing increased funds for domestic AIDS treatment, prevention and research. But the nation's largest GLBT advocacy group continues to point out the lack of effort toward effective prevention, reflected by the administration's emphasis on sexual abstinence to the exclusion of safe sex education.
"HRC supports the teaching of abstinence and the delayed onset of sexual activity," wrote Executive Director Elizabeth Birch in a Jan. 29 letter to the president. "We also firmly believe that young people must be armed with information not only about abstinence, but on the proper use of condoms and other contraceptives should they decide to be in a committed and monogamous sexual relationship."
HRC's Communications Director David Smith echoed the pleasant surprise felt by many when Bush announced a $15 billion initiative to combat AIDS in Africa during his State of the Union address. But the president's remarks were noteworthy for virtually ignoring the domestic AIDS crisis, and Birch's letter to Bush addressed that concern.
By Friday, HRC was back to praising the president, who announced that his 2004 budget will feature a 7 percent increase in funds allocated for the fight against AIDS, including a $93 million rise in research and a $100 million boost in the critical AIDS Drug Assistance Programs (ADAP) which provide drugs to uninsured people with AIDS.
Bush also relaxed restrictions on a new 20-minute HIV test that has an accuracy rate of over 99 percent. Under the new rules, the test will be available in up to 100,000 clinics, over double the locations where the "OraQuick" HIV test is currently offered.
The total proposed domestic AIDS spending, $16 billion, was too little too late for the National Stonewall Democrats, who accused Bush of "marginalizing domestic HIV/AIDS funding for a third straight year." After two years of no increases, wrote the gay Democrats, "the small increase in the 2004 budget does not make up the increased inflation rate over three years. As a result, the resources available for Ryan White (CARE Act) continue to be diminished."
According to HRC's Smith, the president deserves credit for putting the international AIDS epidemic on the nation's agenda last week, and for highlighting the domestic crisis in his new budget.
"The area where we have the most disagreement with the administration is prevention," he says. "There is a cure for AIDS, and it's called prevention." The abstinence-only campaign, said Smith, is "not good public health policy," and "not grounded in science."
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Tue Feb 4, 9:59 AM ET
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By David Brough
ROME (Reuters) - HIV/AIDS will have a bigger impact than drought on food supplies in Africa as the deadly disease strikes down millions of farm workers, a U.N. official said Tuesday.
"The issue of HIV/AIDS is so overwhelming that it will change this part of the world for a long time to come -- its impact on women, children; its impact on the labor force, on the local public and private economies," said James Morris, Executive Director of the U.N. World Food Program (WFP).
"You've got 2 1/2 million AIDS orphans (in southern Africa), you've got infection rates among adults of between 15 and 35 percent, and the impact of this is enormous -- depleted public health infrastructure in many of the countries," he added. "It has had a real impact on the agriculture infrastructure."
Asked if the AIDS crisis in Africa would ultimately have more impact on food supplies than recurrent droughts, Morris, told Reuters: "Sure. No question."
Africa, with about 10 percent of the world's population, accounts for nine out of every 10 new cases of HIV infection.
More than 80 percent of AIDS-related deaths have occurred in Africa, the United Nations says.
It says that in Africa's 25 worst affected countries seven million agricultural workers have died from AIDS since 1985 and 16 million more could die by 2020.
Morris, also U.N. special envoy for southern Africa, the region hardest hit by the disease, said AIDS was to blame for soaring school dropout rates and worsening malnutrition in Africa as children stayed at home to care for ailing relatives.
He said WFP, the world's largest food aid agency, needed to deliver more nutritious food to vulnerable people to help them fight the disease.
"Some would say food is the most important drug in the fight against HIV/AIDS," said Morris, who is just back from a tour of sub-Saharan Africa.
He said the U.N. needed to rethink how it would operate in Africa to tackle the AIDS crisis.
"This is a part of the world that will only make it if the rest of the world is heavily engaged," he said.
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Tue Feb 4, 4:48 PM ET
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To: National Desk, Photo Editor
Contact: David Olson of Population Services International, 202-572-4614
WASHINGTON, Feb. 4 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Former Zambian President Kenneth Kaunda promotes compassion for HIV positive people, condom use and voluntary counseling and testing in what is believed to be the first HIV/AIDSprevention TV campaign to feature a former head of state as the central figure. It is certainly the first time that a former head of state has promoted condoms so forthrightly.
Dr. Kaunda, 78, a hero of the African independence movement in the 1950s and 1960s, made a series of ten TV spots in November in Boston where he is spending a year as the first African president-in-residence at Boston University's African Presidential Archives and Research Center. The spots were made for an HIV/AIDS prevention campaign implemented by Population Services International (PSI), a non-profit organization that implements social marketing projects in more than 60 countries. The messages started airing on Zambian television in December.
Dr. Kaunda spoke from the heart in the spots. "My own son died of AIDS in 1986," he says in one spot. "There were some who thought I should remain silent about it. But Mrs. Kaunda and I decided to make this public. I tell you, if we are to win the battle, we must confront this problem openly."
Here are excerpts from other messages, as delivered by Dr. Kaunda:
Compassion for HIV positive people: "If you know someone who has HIV or AIDS, please go to them today and tell them that you love them and will always be there for them. People with HIV need your understanding, not your judgment."
Condom use: "Condom. The very word makes some people nervous. We need to take time to understand how the condom can protect us. HIV/AIDS is a war we have to win. We must use every tool at our disposal."
Voluntary counseling and testing: Go for voluntary counseling and testing at a health center near you. I did. Learn your HIV status today and learn how you can protect yourself and your family."
These spots are only the latest collaboration between Dr. Kaunda and PSI. He launched PSI's first voluntary counseling and testing center in Lusaka, Zambia last year by being the first person tested. He was keynote speaker at two conferences organized in Zambia bringing together church leaders and HIV/AIDS prevention organizations. Dr. Kaunda challenged the church to get more involved in the fight against HIV/AIDS and asked church leaders why they had not done more. "Jesus is watching," he said, "and we can no longer keep silent while AIDS is taking our people."
PSI, the leading social marketing organization in the world, works through the commercial sector in the areas of HIV/AIDS prevention, family planning and maternal and child health.
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Wed Feb 5, 9:20 AM ET
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By NAOMI KOPPEL, Associated Press Writer
GENEVA - Diplomats from poor nations on Wednesday hit out at new attempts to ensure them cheap access to vital drugs, claiming rich countries are making proposals they know will be rejected.
They rallied to support South Africa, which told a meeting of the World Trade Organization that a new proposal by Japan on rules for overriding patents to treat illnesses like HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria is missing the real point of contention between nations.
"We should stop wasting our time on proposals that clearly will not bring us to the real problem, which is the United States' position," said Brazilian diplomat Antonio de Aguiar Patriota.
Talks to settle the issue collapsed shortly before Christmas after the United States refused to accept a proposal that was approved by the WTO's other 143 members.
Japan's proposal — like those made by the United States and the European Union before it — suggests producing a list of 22 diseases that are included, though new ones could be added in the future if there is a public health need.
But developing nations said any proposal that included a list would be unacceptable because trade ministers agreed in 2001 that the decision on what constituted a public health crisis would be left with individual governments.
"It is again a question of interpretation of something that has already been decided," said Indian Ambassador K.M. Chandrasekhar of the Japanese plan.
"Maybe it solves the problem for the U.S. pharmaceutical companies but not for us," Patriota added.
Trade ministers meeting in Qatar in November 2001 recognized the right of WTO members to override patents on expensive Western drugs and make the products themselves when public health is at stake.
However, drugs made under such "compulsory licensing" were to be used only domestically and not exported. As most developing countries have no drug industry, they cannot benefit because they can neither make the drugs they need nor import them.
The problem was supposed to be settled by the end of last year, but Washington has held out, claiming that some countries could use the rules to ignore patents on drugs to treat noninfectious illnesses like asthma, diabetes or obesity. That could remove the incentive for drug companies to develop new treatments, it said.
"More and more pharmaceutical research is being conducted in the United States because of the environment that is provided there for research, and it is extremely important not just for the United States and the manufacturers but for the world that we maintain that research capability," Deputy U.S. Trade Representative Peter Allgeier said Tuesday.
Talks are expected to continue over the next few days but it seems unlikely that the problem can be settled before the WTO General Council — which has to take the final decision — meets on Monday and Tuesday.
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Wed Feb 5, 5:11 PM ET
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BERLIN (Reuters Health) - A man who was tested for HIV without giving his consent for the test has taken a university hospital clinic to court, according to a report in a weekly doctors' magazine.
The magazine, Aerztezeitung, reported this week that Michael Wessels, a private patient, had indicated on a patient consent form that he did not want an HIV test. Later, he discovered from his itemized bill that he had been given the test anyway. He had been admitted to the clinic in Munster, North Rhine-Westphalia, to have a blood transfusion.
He is now taking the clinic to court, charging them with bodily harm and violating his right to self-determination, the magazine said.
"A positive result would have been a catastrophe for me because I would not have had a chance to prepare myself for it," he was quoted as saying.
The clinic has apologized to Wessels for giving him the test without his consent.
"It should not have happened," hospital spokeswoman Jutta Reising was quoted as saying. The clinic had issued a reminder to staff about the strict rules forbidding HIV tests on patients without proper consent.
German law obliges doctors to obtain a patient's consent before beginning treatment, according to the Health Ministry. This restriction does not apply to incarcerated drug addicts, who have to undergo a mandatory HIV test on arrival to protect prison staff.
An AIDS patient support group in North Rhine-Westphalia, called AIDS-Help NRW, is calling for better protection for patients from routine HIV testing without proper consent.
AIDS-Help NRW claims that university clinics routinely carry out HIV tests on patients even if the patients do not belong to groups that are at high risk for the disease.
AIDS-Help manager Dirk Meyer told the magazine that he had also received many complaints from patients who had been pressured to consent to an HIV test. He said that Wessels was, however, the first patient who was prepared to take legal action.
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Wed Feb 5, 5:16 PM ET
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To: National and International Desks
Contact: Kristin Hetle, 212-297-5020 or Abubakar Dungus, 212-297-5031 both of the UNFPA David Alexander of Rotary International, 847-866-3245;
UNITED NATIONS, Feb. 5 /U.S. Newswire/ -- UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, and Rotary International have renewed a Memorandum of Cooperation to work together on population and development issues around the world. UNFPA and Rotary will continue their joint efforts through an agreement formalized last year, to address development needs and confront challenges of global population growth.
By the terms of the Memorandum, UNFPA and some of the 30,000 Rotary clubs around the world will consult to identify local population and development needs and seek ways to collaborate to address them. The Fund will encourage its offices to connect with Rotary clubs and districts at the local level. Rotary will encourage its club and districts to support population and development programmes.
"We are most pleased to continue our working partnership, with Rotary International to tackle the critical population issues facing our human family," said UNFPA Executive Director Thoraya Ahmed Obaid. "We cannot confront the massive challenges of poverty, hunger, disease and environmental destruction unless we address issues of population and reproductive health."
"A core cause of poverty in many parts of the world is the imbalance between population growth and resources such as employment, health care and education," said Rotary International President Bhichai Rattakul. "Rotary has long addressed these issues and we will encourage interested Rotary clubs to continue to work with UNFPA whenever our goals are shared."
Rotary clubs have already begun dealing with population-related issues through programmes focused on hunger prevention, literacy, education and the environment. Examples of the cooperation between Rotary and UNFPA in the past year included launching HIV/AIDS awareness campaigns in highly affected areas in India and undertaking efforts to increase understanding of reproductive health issues in regions of Mexico.
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UNFPA is the world's largest multilateral source of assistance in the areas of reproductive health and population data collection and analysis. The Fund works in over 140 countries and has provided more than $5.6 billion to developing countries since 1969.
Rotary International is an organization of business and professional leaders united worldwide, who provide humanitarian service, encourage high ethical standards in all vocations and help to build goodwill and peace in the world. There are approximately 1.2 million Rotary club members in 164 countries.
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Wed Feb 5, 8:23 PM ET
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Gay.com / PlanetOut.com Network
SUMMARY: Patricia Ware, executive director of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV and AIDS, stepped down from the post on Friday.
Patricia Ware, executive director of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV and AIDS, stepped down from the post on Friday, just days after the withdrawal of an anti-gay candidate she had recommended for the 35-member panel.
Ware, who led the panel since 2001, championed Jerry Thacker's candidacy before it backfired last month in the wake of his public statements that AIDS is a "gay plague" and that homosexuality is a "death style." Sources told the Washington Post that her departure was "the way to go" in helping the Bush administration distance itself from the incident.
Administration officials, however, told the Post that Ware is being promoted to another position in the Department of Health and Human Services.
Ware, a leading proponent of the abstinence-only approach to HIV prevention, is a former director of the conservative Americans for a Sound AIDS/HIV Policy.
As head of the presidential panel, she was often criticized for imposing her abstinence advocacy too strongly in the panel's agenda. Brent Minor, a member of the advisory council, said Ware's departure was "good for the council."
"This is just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic," David Smith, communications director for the Human Rights Campaign, told the Post. Promoting abstinence to the exclusion of other means for HIV prevention, he said, "is not scientifically sound and ignores gay people because they aren't allowed to marry."
In related news, the politically conservative Culture and Family Institute issued a report on Tuesday that accused major news organizations, such as the Washington Post and Newsweek, of engaging in a smear campaign against Thacker's nomination. The report claims the "media firestorm" against Thacker, a conservative Christian, was "stoked by homosexual activist groups."
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Thu Feb 6, 2:57 AM ET
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By CLARE NULLIS, Associated Press Writer
GENEVA - Under a motto of "Raise it, Spend it, Prove it," the new Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and malaria on Friday awarded grants of US$866 million to 60 countries for grassroots projects to save lives and limit suffering.
The grants will ensure that an additional 500,000 people in developing nations are treated with anti-AIDS medicines, a six-fold increase from current levels. They will be used to provide care and support to 500,000 AIDS orphans and vulnerable children, mainly in Africa, and will also beef up prevention campaigns, according to the fund's organizers.
With the new funds, 30 million African families will now be protected from malaria with treated mosquito nets, making the Fund the biggest purchaser of nets on the continent, it said. Money will also be channeled to buy more than 4 million courses of new medicines which are more effective against resistant strains of malaria than current remedies.
A statement from the fund said the new grants will also help treat 2 million people with tuberculosis over the next five years — "without these services, most of these people would either continue infecting others with the disease or die."
AIDS, TB and malaria — the three big diseases of poverty — kill an estimated 10 people per minute, or 15,000 per day.
Richard Feachem, the fund's executive director, praised the progress.
"Not only is the Global Fund encouraging the most effective players to work together to get the job done on the front lines of the epidemics, it is also helping donors coordinate efforts, reduce waste and focus on achieving results," said Feachem at the end of a three-day meeting of the fund's board.
The board elected U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson as its president.
The fund came into life one year ago upon the initiative of U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, with the U.S. government as its largest single donor. Individual organizations have to apply for grants, giving details on how the money will be spent. The aim is to offer avoid red tape than bogs down many government health programs_ although it has suffered some teething problems as a result of bureaucratic wrangling.
Initial grants were awarded last April. Together with the money approved Friday, the fund hopes to hand out $1.5 billion this year. But after that the coffers will be empty, said Feachem, calling for an additional $6.3 billion over the next two years.
"Our focus in 2003 must be on substantial and measured progress in the three domains which comprise the totality of the Global Fund: Raise it, Spend it, Prove it."
Of grants announced so far, Ethiopia was awarded US$93.3 million over two years for programs to combat AIDS and malaria. Mozambique will receive up to US$54 million for its proposals to involve community and government initiatives in addressing HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. Namibia will get some US$26 million to support 150,000 orphans and children affected by HIV.
The fund also awarded malaria grants totaling up to US$27 million over two years to Sudan, after a joint request was submitted by the Sudanese government and southern rebels.
Three states in India received the largest single country grant within Asia, some US$38.8 million for proposals for tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS over two years.
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Thu Feb 6, 3:47 PM ET
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PRETORIA (Reuters) - The South African government, under growing pressure to supply antiretroviral drugs nationwide, said on Wednesday it was exploring a cost-effective way of providing these medications.
AIDS activists and a key government partner, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), have given the government until the end of February to announce a comprehensive AIDS treatment plan or face a civil disobedience campaign.
In the first public response to the ultimatum, Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang said her ministry was in talks with the Treasury to work out how much a state-funded antiretroviral treatment and monitoring program would cost.
"The government is working together with the Treasury to begin to address the issue of cost. We'd like to see the cost of antiretrovirals and other medicines coming down," Tshabalala-Msimang told reporters.
South Africa has more people living with HIV/AIDS than any other country in the world, but the government has dragged its feet on providing antiretrovirals, saying the drugs are too expensive and toxic and that their efficacy is unproven.
Tshabalala-Msimang would not give a cost estimate or a timeframe.
Health officials say the government can only afford to provide drugs for about 480,000 HIV-positive people under its current budget, equivalent to 10% of all those infected.
But Tshabalala-Msimang indicated that the government realizes that it has to do something--and can not rely on overseas aid to carry the costs. "A donor-funded program is unsustainable," the minister told Reuters.
Hundreds of activists, including church and gay and lesbian groups, have scheduled a protest march for February 14th, the day President Thabo Mbeki officially opens parliament in Cape Town, to demand the drugs.
If the government fails to heed their demands, they will mount a civil disobedience campaign, details of which are yet to be released.
Tshabalala-Msimang played down the threat by the lobbyists, saying they were
aware of the ongoing discussions.
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Thu Feb 6, 8:42 PM ET
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Gay.com / PlanetOut.com Network
SUMMARY: Friday is National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day, calling attention to how HIV has disproportionately affected African Americans.
Friday marks the third annual National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day in the United States, and organizations around the country are observing it with programs that call attention to the disproportionate impact of HIV/AIDS on African Americans.
AIDS is the leading killer of African-American men aged 35-44 and African-American women aged 25-34, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). While African Americans make up 12 percent of the population, they account for more than half of new HIV diagnoses annually in the United States.
Moreover, a federal study suggested last summer that young, black men who have sex with men are the U.S. population group with the highest risk of getting HIV.
Rep. Donna Christian-Christensen, D-Virgin Islands, is honorary chairperson of this year's commemoration.
Although we've known about it for two decades, HIV/AIDS continues to move through our African-American communities as a silent killer, infecting now and wreaking havoc later on mothers, fathers, children and whole communities," she said.
According to the Black Congressional Caucus, more than 150 community organization in more than 60 cities have scheduled events and programs for the day that are designed to raise awareness and foster HIV prevention.