News (Updated June 18, 2006)
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Mon Jun 12, 2006 04:48 PM ET
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DURBAN, South Africa (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush's $15 billion program to fight the global AIDS epidemic is scoring victories promoting basic sexual behavior change, reducing HIV prevalence in several badly affected countries, the top U.S. AIDS official said on Monday.
Dr. Mark Dybul, acting U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator, said the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) would likely exceed its $15 billion, five-year funding target by 2008 and was just the start of a sustained U.S. commitment to bringing AIDS under control.
"It's the first step of a quantum leap," Dybul said in an interview at the start of PEPFAR's annual meeting of HIV/AIDS program specialists, held this year in South Africa, one of the countries worst hit by the epidemic.
"We are pleased with what has been accomplished, but we're a long way from reaching our goal yet."
PEPFAR, which Bush unveiled in 2003, has become a central part of the global effort to raise money for AIDS, working in tandem with and providing funds for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria established in 2002.
PEPFAR is now about half way through its original five-year term, and U.S. officials are eager to tout its achievements, ranging from support for some 561,000 patients on life-saving antiretroviral drugs in 15 target countries to the prevention of an estimated 65,100 infant HIV infections through treatment interventions with pregnant women.
With the United Nations estimating that some 39 million people are infected worldwide with HIV however, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa, the battle is clearly only just started and PEPFAR has found itself embroiled in strategic arguments about the best way to take on the disease.
AS EASY AS ABC?
Dybul said that while providing treatment accounted for about 50 percent of PEPFAR's spending -- estimated to total about $4 billion in 2007 -- it was in the area of preventing new infections that the program was seeing some of its most exciting results through campaigns which emphasize the 'ABC' of AIDS prevention: Abstinence, Be Faithful and (use a) Condom.
"ABC is bringing results," Dybul said, attributing programs promoting behavior change to reported declines in HIV prevalence in a number of African countries including Kenya, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Ethiopia.
Some health experts criticize PEPFAR's reliance on the ABC model and its use of religious, or "faith-based," organizations to implement AIDS programs, saying the campaigns over emphasize moral lessons at the expense of basic sexual health.
Dybul rejected the criticism, saying experience to date showed that clear messages on reducing the number of sexual partners and delaying the age of first sexual activity were bringing obvious results.
"We don't differentiate between saving a life and saving a soul. We are trying to save as many lives as possible in as quick a time as possible," he said, adding that the ABC approach was also yielding some encouraging results in the Caribbean and parts of India.
"We're seeing a dramatic decline in (sexual) partnerships, particularly among young men. And my guess is we're seeing prevalence decline in even more countries, we just don't have the demographic data for it yet."
Thursday June 15, 10:38 pm ET
By Allison Linn, AP Business Writer
REDMOND, Wash. (AP) -- Bill Gates plans to withdraw from day-to-day duties at Microsoft Corp., so he can focus on his charitable foundation while others run the company he co-founded and guided to industry dominance and vast personal wealth.
Gates, 50, said Thursday he will remain the company's chairman after transferring his daily responsibilities over a two-year period. One of the key people taking on Gates' responsibilities is technology luminary Ray Ozzie, who developed Lotus Notes and came to Microsoft when it acquired his company, Groove Networks Inc., in 2005.
The move will end an era at Microsoft, which Gates founded in 1975 with childhood pal Paul Allen and has been the public face of ever since. Gates said he is stepping back so he can focus more time on his philanthropic foundation, the world's largest.
The Redmond company on Thursday laid out a plan for other high-ranking executives to take on Gates' duties. Gates and Chief Executive Steve Ballmer also noted that recent corporate reorganizations have been designed to move more responsibility to lower-ranking executives, so the company could more quickly make decisions without Gates and Ballmer.
But, in an interview with The Associated Press, Ballmer conceded that there was no way to replace Gates.
"If we think anybody gets to be Bill Gates, I don't think that's a realistic hypothesis," he said.
Gates stressed that, although he was giving up day-to-day responsibilities beginning in July 2008, he would still play a role at the company.
"I'm not leaving Microsoft," he said.
Gates also said he had no plans to give up the distinction of being the company's largest shareholder.
"I'm proud of that," he said.
Ozzie will immediately assume Gates' title as chief software architect and begin working with Gates on overseeing all software technical design.
Chief Technical Officer Craig Mundie will immediately take the new title of chief research and strategy officer and will work with Gates in those areas. Mundie also will work with general counsel Brad Smith to guide Microsoft's intellectual property and technology policy efforts.
Gates' decision comes at a difficult time for Microsoft. The company recently said it was delaying the new version of its Windows operating system yet again, and it is struggling to compete with Internet rivals such as Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. Investors also were caught off guard this spring when Microsoft announced plans to substantially increase overall research and development costs, and sent share prices tumbling.
But Gates said Microsoft is always facing new competitors and challenges, and the recent spate didn't affect his decision.
"There isn't any time in our history when there haven't been questions about Microsoft," he said.
Gates is ranked by Forbes magazine as the world's richest man, with an estimated wealth of about $50 billion. That great wealth, he said, also brings great responsibility, and he repeated his often-spoken desire to give away the bulk of his fortune to charity.
Gates said he didn't realize when he started the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in 2000 what potential there was for addressing some of the world's greatest problems, such as global health and education. The foundation is now the world's largest philanthropy, with assets totaling $29.1 billion.
"Just as Microsoft has taken off in ways I never expected, so has the work of the foundation," he said.
The foundation is considered a leader in international public health, particularly in the fight against HIV, malaria and tuberculosis in the developing world. In the United States, it has put its massive resources behind reforming education and accessing technology in public libraries.
Gates dropped out of Harvard to start Microsoft with Allen in 1975. He took Microsoft public in 1986 and was the company's chairman and CEO until 2000, when he assumed the role of chief software architect and Ballmer, a college friend and one of Gates' early hires, took over the role of chief executive officer. Ballmer will remain responsible for all day-to-day operations and the company's business strategy.
The world "has had a tendency to focus a disproportionate amount of attention on me," Gates said, when in reality, Microsoft is a company with an extraordinary depth and breadth of talent.
"Our leadership team has never been stronger," he said.
"Bill and I are confident we've got a great team that can step up to fill his shoes and drive Microsoft innovation forward without missing a beat," Ballmer said.
Ballmer said he has no plans to step down soon.
"I'm in it for the long run," Ballmer said.
For the past six years Gates has focused on Microsoft's software development as the company's chairman and chief software architect.
Ozzie, 50, worked on the first electronic spreadsheet, VisiCalc, in the early 1980s. In 1983, he joined Lotus Development Corp. -- Microsoft's archrival at the time -- to develop Lotus Symphony, a business software suite.
He later founded Groove Networks, where he developed Groove Virtual Office. Microsoft acquired Groove Networks in April 2005 and named Ozzie chief technical officer.
Mundie, 56, joined Microsoft in 1992 to create and run its Consumer Platforms Division, which was responsible for non-personal computer software. Mundie also started Microsoft's digital TV efforts. His current responsibilities include global technology policy and a variety of technical and business incubation efforts.
Ozzie and Mundie will continue to report to Gates, as will the company's third chief technical officer, David Vaskevitch. At an unspecified time during the two-year transition period, they will shift to reporting to Ballmer.
The news was announced after financial markets closed. Earlier, shares in Microsoft rose 19 cents, or 0.87 percent, to close Thursday at $22.07 on the Nasdaq Stock Market. Shares lost 9 cents in after-hours trading.
Mon Jun 12, 2006 10:11 AM ET
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SAPA quoted results of a survey by the public Service Commission conducted in the country's 9 provinces in which the agency was shocked to find that some government officials believe that the disease could be healed.
"The final result indicated that especially in (northern) Mpumalanga and Gauteng (provinces), a high percentage of public officials believe that HIV and AIDS can be cured," SAPA quoted the Commission as finding. The industrial district of Gauteng includes Johannesburg and the capital Pretoria.
"It would have been expected that respondents who had been informed about HIV and AIDS would have believed that it cannot be cured," it concluded, calling for enhanced awareness programs within government on fighting the AIDS pandemic.
South Africa has the biggest AIDS caseload on the globe. But the study found that about a third of government departments did not have programs on prevention and treatment of sexually transmitted infections, and the same number had no policy on halting the infection of HIV, which causes AIDS, SAPA reported.
AIDS has no known cure.
PARIS (AFP) - Less than five percent of children who are badly infected with the AIDS virus have access to the antiretroviral drugs that could save their lives, a Unicef conference was told.
AIDS "is undoing in 10 years what the world community had been trying to do in 50 years" to reduce child mortality, said Peter McDermott, in charge of the HIV/AIDS programme at the UN Children's Fund (Unicef).
Around 2.3 million children aged under 15 have the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) or AIDS, of whom 660,000 are so advanced in their infection that they urgently need antiretrovirals. Less than one in 20 receive the treatment, said McDermott.
Around 90 percent of children with HIV became infected through their mother's blood during pregnancy or through their mother's milk during nursing.
Use of nevirapine and other antiretrovirals reduces the risk of mother-to-child transmission from 25 percent to five or six percent, said Francois Dabis of the University of Bordeaux in southwestern France.
"There has been a spectacular fall in child cases of AIDS in Thailand," he noted.
The conference also appealed for greater help for the world's growing army of children who have lost parents to AIDS. There are around 14 million "AIDS orphans," and some of them also have HIV, experts said.
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Piot and Suma Chakrabarti, permanent secretary of the Britain's department for international develeopment, arrived in Lilongwe on a three-day visit to assess programmes in the pandemic-ravaged southern African nation.
"We have a serious problem in the fight against HIV/AIDS... We will be appealing for more assistance to buy more free ARVs (antiretroviral medicines) for a growing number of children born with the disease," Mary Shaba, permanent secretary for HIV/AIDS and nutrition in the president's office, told AFP.
Shaba said up to 26,000 children were born HIV-positive in the southern African country every year.
"These are the figures that have come out since 2004...so you can imagine what type of a population Malawi is breeding," she said.
She said only five percent of HIV positive children were receiving anti-retroviral drugs.
"We need special tablets for children. We want to increase the percentage of children on ARVs to 15 percent by 2009 ... we need to run and intensify prevention work, especially of mother-to-child transmission, " she said.
Shaba said Malawi had revised its roll-out programme of ARVs, saying the country needed more resources to reach a target of 80,000 people by 2008.
Some 46,000 people living with AIDS are receiving free ARVs in Malawi up from 4,000 two years ago, and authorities here hope to reach 70,000 patients by the end of 2006.
Malawi, where the pandemic has cut life expectancy to 36 and 85,000 people die of AIDS-related illnesses every year, has received financial aid from the Global Fund against AIDS, Tuberclosis and Malaria.
By by Abhik Kumar Chanda
JOHANNESBURG (AFP) - South Africa is taking small steps to stop AIDS from wreaking havoc on its key farm sector in a nation with one of the world's heaviest caseloads.
A few non-governmental organisations and farmers have launched testing programmes but the government has no specific policy for the sector that is emerging as one of hardest-hit by the pandemic.
A pioneer project launched in four farms by AgriAids, an organisation which has been testing workers and providing them with free anti-retrovirals, has thrown up startling figures.
In the past two years, 26 percent of a total of 638 people tested on farms in northern and central South Africa were found to have HIV.
Of those who are HIV-positive, 173 are getting food supplements while 46 are receiving anti-retroviral treatment. Five people have died.
Jill Axten, the owner of Green's Greens -- one of the country's leading vegetable farms -- said there had been significant progress after she launched a testing programme on her farm, which supplies to leading retailers.
"Two of the workers who tested positive are now counsellors. People on the farm talk about the disease openly and without shame. It has made a tremendous difference in morale as well," she said.
The UN AIDS agency said in its recently released annual report that South Africa's agricultural workforce could decline by more than 15 percent by 2020 due to AIDS, citing estimates from the International Labour Organisation (ILO).
Gretha Kostwinder, agricultural counsellor at the Dutch embassy who is involved in HIV/AIDS projects, said more could be done on South African farms to tackle HIV.
"The farmers have not yet realised the cost of the pandemic. Training people is expensive and there is a significant impact on productivity. Many people believe that replacement workers keep queueing up around the corner for jobs," she said.
"Life in the farms is very cloistered. People live near each other. And lack of awareness and high levels of stigma are problems."
Marianne van der Laarse, who works on HIV/AIDS intervention projects for producer SA Veg, added: "The infection rate in some farms can be as high as up to 55 percent, especially in the remote rural areas bordering Zimbabwe and Mozambique."
She added that big business had to be roped in to make a difference in the sector that accounts for 7.5 percent of South Africa's total workforce of 12 million.
"Leading retailers for instance can be encouraged to source their goods from farms which have launched some kind of AIDS programme," she said, adding: "Farmers also have to see absenteeism in monetary terms to realise the impact."
The main farmers organisation AgriSA is meanwhile mulling a comprehensive strategy to tackle HIV/AIDS.
"There are a number of individual projects by non-governmental bodies and some individual farmers. We are looking at coordinating the efforts and building up synergies," said AgriSA official Kobus Kleynhans.
Analyst Russell Lamberti, who has researched the impact of HIV/AIDS on the economy, said the scenario was bleak for farm workers.
"As HIV begins to impact more and more, farmers will increasingly shift to capital intensive agriculture and replace men with machines to ensure productivity," he said.
South Africa has one of the world's biggest AIDS caseloads with about six million people infected with the virus, according to the health ministry.
Some 130,000 people are receiving free ARV treatment under a scheme launched by the government at the end of 2003.
