Sunday Times (Johannesburg) - October 2, 2005
Brendan Boyle and Buddy Naidu

Richard Holbrooke, now head of the Global Business Coalition on HIV/Aids, said on Wednesday that South Africa and India were worst affected by the pandemic.

He then asked De Beers SA managing director Jonathan Oppenheimer: "But why [does] Manto remain? Why your President keeps Manto, who continues to give her monthly sermons on garlic and lemon juice, is beyond me."

Former US presidential nominee John Kerry, tycoon Richard Branson, actress Angelina Jolie and Anglo American chairman Sir Mark Moody-Stuart were present at the briefing.

De Beers and Volkswagen SA received awards at a gala event later, attended by former First Lady Hillary Clinton and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Meanwhile, a special edition of the British Medical Journal (BMJ) this week raised concerns that the scientific community is largely ignoring Africa's Aids pandemic.

Though critical of the low foreign commitment to research in Africa, guest editors Jimmy Volmink and Lola Dare were particularly critical of African scientists. "The dearth of research done in Africa for Africa is untenable," they said in an editorial.

Volmink is professor of primary healthcare at the University of Cape Town's medical school. Dare is the chief executive of the Centre for Health Sciences in Nigeria.

"There can be no doubt that African research is moribund. Inequalities in health research contribute to inequalities in health," they added.

In another paper co-authored by Volmink, scientists said only 77 research projects on the prevention or treatment of HIV/Aids had been completed in Africa since 1987, nearly all of them mounted and funded by foreign governments and pharmaceutical companies.

Though Africa is estimated to have more than 25 million people with HIV/Aids, none of the studies involved more than 40000 people.

Volmink told the Sunday Times that African countries often did not benefit from research on the continent. Drugs arising out of the research were often too expensive for Africans or not available.

Volmink said the research had also raised concerns about the ethical standards applied in Africa.

Only 39 of the 77 trials tracked were ethically approved by the host country and the home base of the researchers, where standards were likely to be higher.

Many of the papers in the BMJ's Africa-theme edition reported promising findings on the treatment of non-Aids-related health problems, including a possibly cheap medication to prevent women from bleeding to death after giving birth.

One paper argued that African governments could save around 250000 children every year by abandoning fee systems initially introduced at the behest of International Monetary Fund and World Bank advisers. Fees caused poor families to wait too long before seeking help and sometimes stripped them of the means to rebuild their health, it said.

051002
ST051004