News (Updated January 12,
2003)
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Tuesday,
26 November, 2002, 12:59 GMT
Aids is killing and impoverishing whole
families
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By
Adam Brookes
BBC Beijing correspondent |
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The farmer's wife, Hu Zeying, is
66-years-old.
She wears a faded blue cotton
jacket and her face is streaked with tears.
I met her in her one-storey
brick house in Anhui province in eastern China.
Her eldest son died of an
Aids-related infection three months ago. Now her second son, Baifang, lies
racked with fever, barely able to talk.
He is suffering powerful fevers
and diarrhoea. He says he longs to die.
Baifang contracted HIV when he
sold his blood plasma to a commercial dealer at a government-run clinic. It
was easy money, but the needles were filthy.
In this poor village, many of
the young men did the same, and now, HIV is running rampant through the
community.
Mounting debts
Mrs Hu has the barest
understanding of HIV. She does not know there is no cure. She has never
heard of anti-retroviral drugs.
She tells me she has spent her
life savings on glucose drips and aspirin for her sons. Now, her meagre
resources are gone.
Nobody is tending her tiny scrap
of land and the family is sinking deeper and deeper into debt.
In China's poor villages, the
state's response to HIV is non-existent and here, the disease doesn't just
kill its victims - it impoverishes them too.
The village has one health
worker. He says eight villagers have died from Aids in the last six months.
A quarter of the village's population may be HIV positive.
He has no anti-Aids drugs and no
training. Handing out a few leaflets is the sum of his prevention work.
At China's top Aids clinic in
Beijing, treatment is reserved for the wealthy few. Up-to-date Aids drugs
cost five times the salary of a Chinese worker and the patient must pay.
In China HIV/Aids is going to
kill millions of people. That much is already clear.
There are some signs that the
central government in Beijing is waking up to the danger, but Aids education
and prevention across this vast country has even now barely begun.
HIV/AIDS in China:
| People with
HIV: |
1.2m |
| New HIV
cases in 2002: |
270,000 |
| Deaths from
Aids in 2002: |
45,000 |
| Children
(under 15) with Aids by end of 2002: |
4,000 |
| Source: UNAIDS,
2002 |
| Aids deaths in 2001 |
| China: |
30,000 |
| Papua New Guinea: |
880 |
| Japan: |
430 |
| South Korea: |
220 |
| Source: UNAIDS,
2002 |
By Karen Pallarito
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Media giant
Viacom Inc. on Monday launched an unprecedented multimedia blitz to combat HIV
and AIDS.
Viacom, whose media empire includes broadcast
networks CBS and UPN, cable networks MTV, BET and Nickelodeon, and more than 180
Infinity radio stations, will run a series of public service messages and weave
HIV/AIDS storylines into upcoming episodes of shows like "Becker,"
"Girlfriends" and "One on One."
Viacom and its non-profit partner, the Henry J.
Kaiser Family Foundation, first announced the effort last fall. The campaign's
goals are to raise the general public's awareness of HIV/AIDS and promote
prevention and testing among high-risk groups.
AIDS is on track to be the worst disease in
human history, affecting 100 million people by 2020, according to Viacom
Spokesman Imara Jones. Yet, the "seriousness of the crisis and its scale
and scope" have been "diminished over the years," he said.
"The irony is, at the time when we have
some of the greatest complacency over the disease, we have the greatest
crisis," Jones told Reuters Health.
The campaign begins in the US today with a
week-long concentration of public service announcements created for television,
radio and outdoor venues. A total of 49 spots, valued at more than $120 million,
will appear over the course of the year.
Kaiser assisted Viacom's internal creative team
in producing the ads. "They have played a key role in helping us to shape
public messages...and they've been integral in providing information to our
shows," Jones said.
UPN's "Girlfriends" will have one of
its characters developing a documentary about HIV/AIDS. In "One on
One," single dad "Flex" Washington, played by actor Flex
Alexander, gets an HIV test. And on an upcoming episode of CBS's
"Becker," actor Ted Danson, who plays Dr. John Becker, will talk to a
teenager about the risks of HIV.
Viacom said it has other shows in development
and that its MTV, BET, Showtime and Nickelodeon networks also have special
programming planned throughout the year.
Meanwhile, Viacom and Kaiser have initiated
conversations with potential broadcasting partners around the globe where
HIV/AIDS is spreading quickly and affecting many people. Target markets include
China, Africa, and Brazil, Jones said.
Viacom has made a "multiyear"
commitment to fostering awareness of the disease and its prevention. "In
our mind, that's at least 2 years," Jones said.
By EDITH M. LEDERER, Associated Press Writer
UNITED NATIONS - Rich nations are
committing "mass murder by complacency" by failing to contribute
enough money to defeat the AIDS pandemic that is ravaging Africa and killing
millions every year, a top U.N. official says.
An appeal launched by Secretary-General Kofi
Annan in April 2001 for US$7 billion to US$10 billion annually to combat AIDS,
tuberculosis and malaria has received just US$2.1 billion. The Global Fund
created to disperse the funds will be running out of money at the end of the
month, the U.N. adviser on AIDS in Africa said.
"We could prolong and save millions of
lives if we had the resources," Stephen Lewis told a news conference on
Wednesday. "We don't have the resources."
In a scathing indictment, he said the
continent's leaders are increasingly committed to fighting the killer disease
but the money isn't there and a war against Iraq would compound the funding
crisis.
"It's legitimate to ask: What's wrong with
this world? What's wrong with the rich countries? Why are they willing to
jeopardize the integrity of the most hopeful financial instrument we have to
combat the cruelest disease the world has ever seen?" Lewis said.
"A major newspaper in the United States,
reflecting on the paucity of resources, used the startling phrase `murder by
complacency.' I differ in only one particular: it's mass murder by
complacency," he said.
He urged the Group of Seven major industrialized
nations — the United States, Britain, France, Japan, Italy, Germany and Canada
— to make new contributions in the immediate future, warning that a war in
Iraq would "eclipse every other international human priority, HIV/AIDS
included."
Lewis, who visited four devastated countries
last month and is returning to Africa later this month, said "there is no
question that the pandemic can be defeated ... with a joint and Herculean effort
between the African countries themselves and the international community."
He said he would continue to hammer at that
message — and to stress that all over the continent, Africans are engaged in
AIDS initiatives and projects which would halt the pandemic if expanded
throughout their countries.
Worldwide, there are 42 million HIV positive
people, with sub-Saharan Africa home to 75 percent of them, according to UNAIDS,
the U.N.'s AIDS agency.
"I don't think the world can live much
longer losing 3 to 5 million people every year, year after year. At some point,
the cumulative impact of that has to impress itself on the minds and policies of
the political leadership of the Western world," Lewis said.
"This pandemic cannot be allowed to
continue, and those who watch it unfold with a kind of pathological equanimity
must be held to account. There may yet come a day when we have peacetime
tribunals to deal with this particular version of crimes against humanity,"
he warned.
As examples of the problem, Lewis said
impoverished Lesotho has one of the highest HIV rates on the continent and
"a most impressive political leadership" committed to fighting the
disease, but insufficient funds to save "countless lives."
While Zambia's former president Frederick
Chiluba disavowed the reality of AIDS, its new president, Levy Mwanawasa, is now
trying to combat the disease, but faces a daunting task with few resources, he
said.
Lewis said there is now solid evidence that AIDS
and hunger are linked. In Malawi, for example, he said 50 percent of poor
households are affected by chronic illness due to HIV/AIDS.
The pandemic also threatens education because
large numbers of teachers are dying. It has led to increasing sexual abuse of
children and adolescents, and it has created an "astronomical number of
orphans," escalating the reality of orphan street children, orphan gangs
and orphan delinquency, he said.
By PAUL GEITNER, AP Business Writer
BRUSSELS, Belgium - The European Union
proposed Thursday calling in the World Health Organization to rescue a deal —
blocked last month by the United States — on improving access to lifesaving
drugs for poor countries.
Blaming a "lack of trust" between
Washington and developing countries for the failure of talks last month at the
World Trade Organization, EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy said involving the
WHO could restore good faith.
"When there's too much mistrust in the game
then you have to call on a third party, and the WHO is a trusted party," he
told reporters.
The impasse over access to medicines — which
was supposed to be settled last year — could seriously jeopardize the new
round of global trade liberalization talks launched in November 2001.
Despite a series of tight deadlines early this
year, developing countries are unlikely to agree on any other issues until the
drug problem has been settled.
A draft agreement worked out last month at the
WTO in Geneva would have allowed some developing countries to ignore patents and
import cheap copies of drugs to treat a variety of diseases, including HIV/AIDS
and malaria.
But the United States wanted to limit its scope
only to epidemics of infectious diseases so that developing countries could not
use it to gain cheap drugs for other conditions like asthma, diabetes or
migraine headaches.
Developing countries refused, arguing any list
would be too restrictive and inflexible.
The EU's new proposal would start with a broad
list of infectious diseases, but allow WTO members facing "any other public
serious public health problems" to ask the WHO, a U.N. agency, for guidance
on whether their situation was covered as well.
"We are convinced that we will be able to
break the deadlock and rapidly achieve a final agreement," Lamy said.
A U.S. trade official, speaking on condition of
anonymity, said Washington was open to considering new ideas, but would wait to
see how developing countries react to the EU proposal.
Brazil and India, two developing countries that
are also major exporter of generic drugs, and Kenya, which speaks for the
African Group, also had no immediate reaction.
After the talks broke down Dec. 20, Washington
pledged to continue to work for a WTO solution while also announcing its own
initiative: a pledge not to challenge any country that breaks WTO rules to
export drugs to a country in need until a resolution is found.
The interim U.S. solution would cover infectious
diseases including HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, ebola, African
trypanosomiasis, cholera, dengue, typhoid and typhus fevers.
"We urge others to join us in this
moratorium to help poor countries get access to emergency lifesaving
drugs," U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick said last month.
But Lamy said the 15-nation EU would not sign on
because the U.S. solution was temporary and unilateral.
"It doesn't guarantee the necessary
stability and legal certainty," he said. "We want to have a
multilateral contract.
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - A senior UN
official warned on Wednesday that a war against Iraq would "eclipse"
every other international human priority, leaving people with AIDS among its
greatest sufferers.
In an impassioned plea for funds, Stephen Lewis,
a special UN envoy to combat AIDS in Africa, told a news conference that the
time for polite or even agitated entreaties was over or the world would be
committing "mass murder by complacency."
"If, as some suggest, there is a war in
Iraq come February, then the war will eclipse every other priority," Lewis
said.
AIDS will kill 70 million people over the next
20 years, mostly in Africa, unless rich nations step up their efforts to curb
the disease, according to UN figures. Last year AIDS killed a record 3 million
people, 2.2 million in Africa alone--and HIV infected another 5 million
worldwide.
"People living with HIV/AIDS are in a race
against time," Lewis said. "What they never imagined was that over and
above the virus itself, there would be a new adversity and that adversity would
be a war."
"Wars divert attention, wars consume
resources, wars ride roughshod over external calamities," Lewis added.
The Global Fund to Fight AIDS has receive
pledges for about $2.5 billion dollars but not all the money has been received.
However, UN estimates say the fund will need $3.2 billion this year, increasing
in stages to $9.2 billion in 2005.
"If the United States and the other members
of the Group of Seven don't augment their contributions to the Global Fund in
the immediate future, we will be in desperate trouble," Lewis said, adding
that the fund had enough money until the end of January but then "can be
said to be in crisis."
Reporting on a trip to Lesotho, Malawi, Zambia
and Zimbabwe, Lewis said all were engaged in endless numbers of initiatives,
projects, programs and models. If broadened throughout the country, the pandemic
would be halted.
"What is required is a combination of
political will and resources," he said. "The political will is
increasingly there. The money is not."
By Charles Ornstein
California's HIV reporting system has been
hobbled in its first six months by the failure of some doctors and clinics to
provide the data required by law, county health officials say.
If the problems are not resolved, authorities
say, they won't be able to track the epidemic's spread. And California risks
coming up short as early as next year, when the federal government begins
linking its treatment and service grants to the number of state HIV cases.
"It's a disaster," Dr. Steven Miles, a
physician at the UCLA Center for Clinical AIDS Research and Education, said of
the new reporting system.
So far, the state has been informed of only a
fraction of the cases that officials believe are out there: 9,155 through Dec.
31 out of 80,000 projected by federal officials.
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