Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2002. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Newsday - April 23, 2002
Laurie Garrett, Staff Writer
The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria was created last year at the behest of United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan as a means for bringing treatment advances to poor AIDS sufferers, particularly those in sub-Saharan Africa. Annan called for spending $7 billion to $10 billion annually.
Developing countries have asked for more than $5 billion. But to date the fund contains less than $700 million. On Capitol Hill, Senate members are scrambling to come up with another $1.2 billion to augment this year's $250 million U.S. commitment. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) are asking the White House to add $700 million to the emergency spending act. Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), who is seeking $500 million for drugs to block mother-to-child HIV transmission in poor countries, is being lobbied to direct the money to the global fund.
Several UN agencies, as well as humanitarian organizations such as Medecins Sans Frontieres -- Doctors Without Borders -- released statements promoting spending all, or most, of the fund on buying drugs for treatment in poor countries.
"This is a war to end all wars. A war between good and bad, greediness and humanity," Zambian treatment advocate Brigitte Syamalezwe, 43, told a New York news conference. Syamalezwe, of Life AIDS International in Lusaka, Zambia, said her husband is dying of AIDS, and she, the mother of 11 and grandmother of 5, is infected with HIV. She charged that denying Africans like herself access to anti-HIV drugs is akin to "global terrorism."
The World Health Organization yesterday announced from Geneva that it is adding anti-HIV drugs to the official Essential Drugs List, used as a basis for regional discount buying of patented pharmaceuticals.
"Our goal is that 50 percent of all those with HIV can be reached with antiretrovirals [HIV drugs] within the next three to four years," the WHO's Dr. Bernard Schwartlander said. WHO estimates that 6 million people worldwide need the drugs.
Various generic cocktails of anti-HIV drugs, absent the expensive protease inhibitors, can now be obtained from an Indian generic manufacturer for as little as $209 a year per patient, putting their use within the reach of Global Fund subsidy.
"Much has changed just in the last two years," Dr. Jos Perriens, head of essential drugs for WHO, said in the teleconference. "So the ambitious goals of two years ago that then seemed unimaginable are now attainable."
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