Inter Press Service - July 11, 2000
Farah Khan

The United Kingdom-based Panos Institute put the amount in perspective by revealing that it amounts to just one quarter of the annual American defence budget.

Its scenario study has found that 12-million HIV-positive people in the developing world face death in the next five years because they do not have access to life-saving anti-retroviral drugs which enable sufferers in the developed world to live as normal a life as possible.

Sub-Saharan Africa is home to over 70 percent of the 34,3- million people estimated to be HIV-positive or who have full-blown Aids in the world. Botswana and South Africa have the world's highest rates of infection while countries like Uganda and Senegal have managed the disease well and consequently, their Aids death rates now exceed the rate of infection.

The theme of cheap and accessible drugs has come to dominate the Durban conference, but Panos has also pointed out that money is not the only resource necessary to ensure successful drug treatment.

"For anti-retrovirals to be effective, those taking them must have access to regular laboratory tests and skilled personnel able to interpret those tests and to advise on appropriate treatment," said Panos panellist Dr. Wilbert Bannenburg.

This could be as expensive as the drugs themselves.

Another Panos-linked doctor, Dr. Christopher Ouma, said that governments in sub-Saharan were, on average, spending 14 times more on debt repayments than they were on their health systems.

The lack of progress in efforts to get multinational drug companies to discount the drug to affordable levels (calculated at a reduction of 95 percent of the retail price), the attention is focused instead on a vaccine to fight African Aids strains.

On Tuesday, the European Commission threw its political weight behind the South African HIV Vaccine Campaign with an 11-million SA rand grant to begin to lay the groundwork for the vaccine trials. (One US dollar is equal to 6.8 SA rands.)

"We believe there is a new way of working together. If a vaccine is found for Aids, it will be used in the north and the south," said Dr.Lieve Fransen of the EC. She added that the private sector did not invest adequately in vaccine development because of the profits they made on Aids drugs and because they did not believe there was a market for a vaccine in the developing world.

The SA vaccine campaign is a joint project of the Medical Research Council, the National Aids Convention of SA and the University of Pretoria.

The first trials begin in Durban in December with an initial group of 20 people. The EC grant will be used to popularise the vaccine and to help HIV-positive people to make a decision on whether to participate in the trials or not.

Earlier this year, Dr Salim Abdul-Karim of the Medical Research Council told IPS that the vaccine was being developed specifically for strains of the disease prevalent in Africa.

The vaccine development campaign is something that South Africa can be proud of at the high profile Aids conference. But the government's decision not to provide anti-retrovirals to pregnant mothers and to women who are raped has, again, embarrassed the government.

On Sunday, African National Congress MP, Winnie Madikizela- Mandela, started the ball rolling when she hit out at the government for not providing the drugs Nevirapine or AZT to pregnant women. The two drugs have been found to reduce the risk of infection from mother to child by between 50 and 70 percent.

"The government argues that it cannot afford the drugs, but activists say that as a middle-income country, South Africa can. "This (Aids) is a social holocaust. Yet the government has wasted its time with Sarafina, Virodene and the right-wing of rebel scientists," said Madikizela-Mandela.

Her broadside referred to the millions of Rands spent on an ill- fated Aids play (Sarafina); more millions spent on a failed Aids drug (Virodene) and President Thabo Mbeki's affinity for dissident scientists who question the fact that HIV causes Aids.

Dr. David Ho of the Aaron Diamond Aids Research Centre at Rockefeller University in New York, USA said that the positive results of anti-retrovirals were "overwhelming". He said that it made both human and economic sense to give the drugs to HIV-positive pregnant mothers. "It is cheaper to have healthy babies, than to give medical treatment to HIV-positive babies," said Ho. (END/IPS/fk/sm/00).
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