OUAGADOUGOU, Dec 10 (AFP) - Access to superior AIDS treatments, notably tritherapies, talks Monday at the 12th International Conference on AIDS and Sexually Transmitted Diseases in Africa (CISMA).
Experts stressed that such treatments were vital for Africa, the continent suffering most from the scourge with 70 percent of global AIDS-linked deaths.
"Access to anti-retrovirals is maybe a utopia but it is a necessary one," said Aliou Sylla, a doctor from Mali.
"Don't start an ideological battle here. The anti-retrovirals are an element of competence against AIDS, let us try and get them for free," he said to thunderous cheers.
The five-day AIDS conference, with the theme of "Community Solutions," formally opened in Ouagadougou late Sunday.
In rich countries, the arrival of tritherapies in 1996 revolutionised AIDS treatment -- a phenomenon which has had virtually no effect in Africa given the costs involved.
Despite the signing of several pacts between African countries and leading global pharmaceutical companies for cheaper medicines, especially anti-retroviral drugs, access to treatment for the average African is still limited and far too expensive.
Some 30,000 people in Africa have benefited from tritherapies, a figure the UNAIDS agency has dismissed as "minute."
The agency said that of the 40 million people today living with AIDS or HIV, 28.1 million live in sub-Saharan Africa, and the continent witnessed 2.3 million AIDS-related deaths this year.
UNAIDS said that in the absence of proper treatment, most HIV-positive Africans are not expected to survive the present decade.
UNAIDS head Peter Piot said the access to health care for all "must start where the infrastructures function."
Some countries are trying to import generic drugs to slash costs and have been encouraged by the results of a recent World Trade Organisation meeting in Doha.
The conference here also addressed the issue of encouraging greater participation by individual companies in the fight against AIDS.
Marie Mendel, an activist from Cameroon, said the country's national power company had been giving tritherapies freely to its employees since 1999.
At the demand of an employee, management conducted a study showing that some 60 of the 4,400 employees were HIV-positive.
The figure is probably an underestimation given that the prevalence rate in the country is around 11 percent.
Mendel, who is herself HIV-positive, said the company was recently privatised and that the new American management also supported the tritherapies programme.
UNAIDS and the World Health Organisation (WHO) said in their annual report on the pandemic released last month that in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Nigeria and Togo at least five percent of the population aged 15-49 has HIV or full-blown AIDS.
In 16 other countries, the rate is at least one in 10. Worst of all is southern Africa, where in Botswana more than one in three of the nationwide adult population is infected.
Global AIDS conferences are held every two years, and the next will take place in Barcelona, Spain, in July.
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