InterPress News Service (IPS); Friday, 7 November 1977.
Gustavo Capdevila

The Joint U.N. Pprogramme on AIDS (UNAIDS) is attempting to promote state-of-the-art AIDS care to underdeveloped, and very often poor, countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. The pilot phase of the project will be implemented in Uganda, the Ivory Coast, Chile and Vietnam.

The project is looking to improve sanitary infrastructure so as to facilitate the distribution of medicines, and counting on the contributions of pharmaceutical companies, which will subsidize the treatments. Another feature of the initiative is the multiple participation the interested parties. This includes governments, civil society and the patients themselves.

UNAIDS is composed of the AIDS programmes of four U.N. agencies, The World Health Organisation (WHO) and the World Bank.

According to Awa Coll-Seck, UNAIDS Director of Policy, Strategy and Research, more than 90 percent of the 23 million people infected with HIV, the virus that can lead to the acquired immune deficiency syndome (AIDS), live in the Third World.

Unlike in developed nations, gaining access to treatments and medicines is extremely difficult and "constitutes a daily struggle for those affected by the AIDS virus."

Coll-Seck warned of the dangers of "simply accepting that certain countries cannot access treatment because they are too poor." Instead, he proposed a search for the mechanisms that would "offer at least the hope of access to better treatments."

The UNAIDS plan contemplates the distribution of HIV medication at reduced prices, including the retroviral drugs that combat the progression of HIV infection. The list of medications also includes those used to prevent and fight the opportunistic infections which regularly afflict people with HIV.

Unternational laboratories took part on year-long discussions with UNAIDS and companies that have agreed to participate in the new project include Glaxo Wellcome, Hoffmann-LaRoche and Virco, while others like Janssen Pharmaceutical and Organan Teknica have expressed interest in joining the project.

UNAIDS officer Joseph Saba, who is coordinating the initiative, explained that pharmaceutical companies expressed interest in making the medicines available at subsidized prices.

These companies will obtain long term benefits from the opening of new markets for their products, added Coll-Seck.

In its pilot phase, the project will be implemented through two institutional bodies, which will be set up in each of the 4 countries. A national advisory council on HIV/AIDS medication will formulate policies for the administration of drug treatments based on an examination of needs, the most efficient use of resources, and the selection of the medicines.

The second entity, a non-profit organization, will serve as the site from which orders are place on behalf of the government and also as the institution that will facilitate the entry of the medicines into the country and channel the subsidies to the appropriate companies within the country.

When the pilot project comes to an end, UNAIDS will conduct an evaluation to determine whether or not it was effective. Experts will identify any improvements in overall sanitary services as well as the number of people who received treatments.

This evaluation will also determine the impact of the program in relation to the demand for assistance and look at the rates of HIV-related illness and death. The project intends to make available already proven strategies to improve services and broaden access to medicines.

Saba was hopeful that this new strategy could make "the treatment of HIV and AIDS a reality for many people in the developing world that presently have little or no access to medical care." (FIN/IPS/pc/dg/he-pr-hd/mg/97)

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