HUGO SWIRE, the MP for East Devon, did well to initiate a recent Westminster Hall debate on anti-retroviral drugs. Figures provided in a 2004 UNAIDS report expose the crisis: for Africa, AIDS is now the number one overall cause of death. Rates of HIV infection continue to rise in sub-Saharan Africa, where in 2003 alone, an estimated 3 million people became newly infected, he said. Many MPs consider this an underestimate.
Even after a decade of international effort to stem the worldwide AIDS epidemic there is no known cure. However, treatment with anti-retrovirals has reduced rates of mortality, revitalised communities and significantly improved the quality of life of many AIDS sufferers, Swire said. Because of these drugs, AIDS is sometimes considered to be a manageable chronic illness rather than a plague.
Sadly though, few African countries can share that view. A non-profit-making solution to the AIDS crisis in Africa is urgently needed, Swire asserted. There are other considerations apart from the cost of drugs: for example, the Brazilian government estimates that anti-retroviral drugs have made savings of $2.2 billion in the hospital care that treating people living with HIV would otherwise have needed.
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Invariably it falls to a junior minister to reply to Westminster Hall debates but at this one Hilary Benn, the secretary of state for international development, took the opportunity to tell MPs about some of the more hopeful developments in Africa. In South Africa, he said, Aspen Pharmacare is already producing anti-retroviral drugs under voluntary licences from GlaxoSmithKline and Bristol-Myers Squibb. In Ethiopia, Bethlehem Pharmaceuticals is preparing production under licence, working with an African non-governmental organisation, the Initiative for Pharmaceutical Technology Transfer. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, there is a partnership between Pharmakina, a German-French company, and the German technical development agency GTZ. Zambia hopes eventually to sell anti-retrovirals to 13 neighbouring countries. And Brazil is giving $100,000 in technology transfer grants to various African countries.
The UK is second only to the US in the long-term funds it sets aside for African countries to identify solutions and use them against AIDS. The UK has earmarked 拢250 million up to 2008, and will increase its spending and continue its support for the global fund set up by the G8 nations to tackle AIDS. 鈥淲e have a moral obligation to ensure that the collective will, money, resources and effort are used to the best effect to help the greatest number of people in tackling this dreadful epidemic,鈥� the secretary of state said.
Clearly, all is not doom and gloom for the future in tackling the AIDS pandemic, as some accounts would have us believe.
