Plague on the poor: How Aids divides the world

[Guest guest]

Plague on the poor: How Aids divides the world

By Charles Arthur

01 December 2003

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_medical/story.jsp?story=468918

 

If HIV were just a bug that people were fighting against, it would be hard

enough. But it is difficult not to think of the human immunodeficiency virus

as an intelligent and calculating enemy: " This is one of the smartest

viruses that people have ever seen, " says Lisa Price, the policy manager for

the Terence Higgins Trust, the best-known British Aids charity. " It changes

all the time. "

 

In the time it took to read that paragraph, three more people became

infected with HIV. The virus's spread is not slowing; both deaths and new

infections reached record levels last year, at 3 million and 5 million

respectively, more than 20 years after it was first identified among US

homosexuals in 1981, and neither a cure nor a vaccine is in sight.

 

Instead - because HIV exploits the tiniest weakness in the body's defences

and mutates to confound attempts to kill it - every time the world's

scientists and politicians think they understand how to tackle the virus,

they discover that it is more complicated still.

 

Some people thought that HIV only affected homosexuals; they were wrong.

Some scientists suggested that HIV did not cause Aids. They were wrong too,

though some people have stuck with that line - most notably South Africa's

president, Thabo Mbeki, who insists he has never known anyone who has died

of Aids. (In a sense he is right - it is the opportunistic infections that

HIV enables which kill you. Most people with full-blown Aids die of

pneumonia.)

 

The disease has has set First and Third World governments at odds over the

anti-retroviral drugs needed to treat it and has even split the Catholic

Church over the Vatican's insistence that condoms spread, rather than

restrict the spread of, HIV.

 

While the World Health Organisation unveils a scheme today for the annual

World Aids Day that it calls " 3 in 5 " - aiming to provide the latest

anti-retroviral drugs to 3 million people by the end of 2005 - the UN

secretary-general, Kofi Annan, has spoken of his frustration at trying to

get the healthy to help the sick.

 

The statistics are numbing. More than 42 million people are infected with

HIV worldwide, of whom 26.6 million live in sub-Saharan Africa. The largest

number of infections is in South Africa, where about five million, or one in

10 citizens, is HIV-positive. And a combination of unprotected sex and drug

abuse is fuelling an explosion of the epidemic around the world. And since

you started reading this article, 20 people have become infected with HIV.

 

Yet in the West, being HIV-positive is no longer the death sentence that it

was in 1983, when doctors had little chance of preventing the infection

turning into full-blown Aids, at which point a patient would typically live

for less than a year.

 

Now, modern drugs mean HIV has become a disease that one can live with. The

drugs bring unpleasant side-effects, such as nausea, occasional

hallucinations and, in some cases, a strange redistribution of fat around

the body. But you can live with them, for years - perhaps indefinitely.

 

In Africa, those treatments have been too rarely available. The WHO

estimates that 4.2 million people need anti-retrovirals in sub-Saharan

Africa; but only 50,000 get supplies.

 

Mr Annan thinks many political leaders do not care enough to fight the

disease, which has killed 28 million people since it was first reported.

 

" I am not winning the war because I don't think the leaders of the world are

engaged enough, " he said. " I feel angry, I feel distressed, I feel helpless.

What is lacking is political will. "

 

Only one thing - the use of condoms - dramatically reduces the spread of

HIV. (Needle swapping programs for intravenous drug users also work, but on

a smaller scale.) And only one thing - anti-retroviral drugs (often called

" triple-therapy cocktails " ) - makes it possible to live with HIV.

 

Given those facts, you might expect the world's leaders to focus on them. Yo

u'd be wrong. And since you started reading this article, 30 people have

become infected with HIV.

 

Catholics for a Free Choice, a pressure group, said yesterday it would begin

an advertising campaign against the policies of the church - which has

millions of followers in Aid-hit countries - saying " Good Catholics Use

Condoms " as " a direct challenge to the cardinals and bishops who recently

claimed that condoms were helping to spread HIV/Aids " .

 

The Vatican supported that bizarre claim in October, saying that condoms had

tiny holes which allowed the virus to pass through - so that to use them

would encourage its spread. The WHO angrily called the advice " incorrect "

and " dangerous " ; Catholics for a Free Choice called the Vatican's policy " a

disaster " .

 

The lack of availability of treatments for those who are infected could be

called a disaster too - though it has not resulted from any dogma. Instead,

it grows from a fundamental dispute between the giant pharmaceuticals

companies, the only organisations able to rapidly and effectively research

new therapies, and the governments of the countries which need them. Western

governments have tried to please both sides, and generally failed.

 

The drug companies want to price the drugs to fund the expensive research

needed to develop the next generation - and perhaps find a chink in HIV's

armour that might lead to a vaccine, or a cure.

 

But African countries cannot afford those prices, and have sought ways

around the companies' patents to make generic versions of the drugs -

exactly the same chemicals, but without the brand name. That led to threats

of trade wars.

 

Former US president Bill Clinton set up a deal in October for four

drug-makers in South Africa and India to sell generic versions of

anti-retroviral treatments for a quarter of the price of the patented

version.

 

Dr Bernard Pécoul of the medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières said: " One

pill, twice a day at this reduced price is exactly what is needed to rapidly

expand the numbers of people receiving anti-retroviral treatment in

developing countries. With that announcement, the WHO's '3 by 5' objective

becomes much more feasible. "

 

Feasible, yes. But will it happen - and by the time it does, will even more

people need the treatment?

 

Meanwhile, the search for better treatments goes on. " We've been saying that

a vaccine is five to 10 years away for 15 years, " said Ms Price. " But it is

looking more realistic that we will [have one] in the next five years. " And

since you began reading this article, more than 40 people have been infected

with HIV - and more than 20 have died from Aids.

 

BOTSWANA: MEDICAL STAFF POACHED BY THE WEST

 

BY AFRICAN standards Botswana is a success story. Rich in diamonds and with

potential for tourism, it is relatively prosperous. Transparency

International ranks it among the least corrupt countries in the world.

 

Yet nowhere is the devastation wreaked by Aids more evident than in

Botswana. When Kofi Annan, the United Nations secretary general, warned last

week of the " genocide of a generation " he must surely have had this small

southern African nation in mind. More than 35 per cent of a population of

1.6 million are HIV-positive. That makes Botswana the country with the

highest infection rate in the world. In the sexually active age group, (15

to 49), the infection rate is close to 40 per cent.

 

By 2010, half of all children in the country will be Aids orphans, and the

average life expectancy will have fallen from 47 to 27. Aids is killing the

people Botswana needs to mine its diamonds and teach in its schools. The

6,000-strong Botswana police force loses 10 people a month to the virus and

the army also has high rates of infection

 

Unlike many African leaders, Botswana's President Festus Mogae has taken the

lead in mobilising his people to fight Aids and has spearheaded Africa's

first antiretroviral drugs programme. But Botswana's nurses, doctors,

pharmacists and other health workers qualified to run such a programme are

leaving. Britain, America and other European countries have poached them.

Botswana recently lost 130 nurses to Britain and the country's 6,000-strong

nursing workforce is not large enough to deal with the country's health

needs. Only 9,000 out of a possible 110,000 patients have been enrolled on

the antiretroviral programme.

 

Mompati Merafhe, the Foreign Minister, has raised the issue of poaching with

the British Government. To the private agencies that recruit the staff, he

said: " How heartless can you be? Why do you recruit medical personnel from

countries which are so afflicted by Aids? " At Princess Marina Hospital in

the capital, Gaborone, 3,000 patients are enrolled on a programme but there

are only 30 nurses trained to run it.

 

Mr Mogae has pursued other avenues. He has told his ministers to include

Aids awareness in every speech. " Even when opening a building, the President

has instructed us to talk about Aids " Mr Merafhe said. The President had an

Aids test to try to remove the stigma. He admits that the taboo about Aids

hampers efforts to combat it. " People are not willing to talk about the

HIV/Aids pandemic " he said.

7 December 2003 00:02

[Guest guest]

This pesky virus is so smart that they cannot even prove that it exists -- nor

has a peer-reviewed paper that establishes a causal link between HIV & AIDS.

Only fragments of the HIV genome have been assembled -- never has the whole DNA

sequence been found -- only fragments that have been put together. It also

follows that it has not been isolated. It HAS been proven, however, that the

idea of the HIV virus makes billions of dollars for the pharmaceutical

companies. Smart virus? Gimme a break.

 

>Plague on the poor: How Aids divides the world

>By Charles Arthur

>01 December 2003

>http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_medical/story.jsp?story=468918

>

>If HIV were just a bug that people were fighting against, it would be hard

>enough. But it is difficult not to think of the human immunodeficiency virus

>as an intelligent and calculating enemy: " This is one of the smartest

>viruses that people have ever seen

.....[snip]

--

Neil Jensen: neil

The WWW VL: Sumeria http://www.sumeria.net/

" Dragons is sooooo stupid! " -- Yosemite Sam

[Guest guest]

If I were on a wicket equal to that of Lisa, do you think that I would be

TOO quick about solving that riddle, and doing myself out of a position in

life??????

Cynical - well maybe - but also realistic.

Jorge

-

" Misty " <misty3

" Health and Healing " <health_and_healing >; " Armageddon

or New Age " <armageddon-or-newage >

Saturday, December 06, 2003 9:06

Plague on the poor: How Aids divides the world

 

 

> Plague on the poor: How Aids divides the world

> By Charles Arthur

> 01 December 2003

> http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_medical/story.jsp?story=468918

>

> If HIV were just a bug that people were fighting against, it would be hard

> enough. But it is difficult not to think of the human immunodeficiency

virus

> as an intelligent and calculating enemy: " This is one of the smartest

> viruses that people have ever seen, " says Lisa Price, the policy manager

for

> the Terence Higgins Trust, the best-known British Aids charity. " It

changes

> all the time. "

>

> In the time it took to read that paragraph, three more people became

> infected with HIV. The virus's spread is not slowing; both deaths and new

> infections reached record levels last year, at 3 million and 5 million

> respectively, more than 20 years after it was first identified among US

> homosexuals in 1981, and neither a cure nor a vaccine is in sight.

>

> Instead - because HIV exploits the tiniest weakness in the body's defences

> and mutates to confound attempts to kill it - every time the world's

> scientists and politicians think they understand how to tackle the virus,

> they discover that it is more complicated still.

>

> Some people thought that HIV only affected homosexuals; they were wrong.

> Some scientists suggested that HIV did not cause Aids. They were wrong

too,

> though some people have stuck with that line - most notably South Africa's

> president, Thabo Mbeki, who insists he has never known anyone who has died

> of Aids. (In a sense he is right - it is the opportunistic infections that

> HIV enables which kill you. Most people with full-blown Aids die of

> pneumonia.)

>

> The disease has has set First and Third World governments at odds over the

> anti-retroviral drugs needed to treat it and has even split the Catholic

> Church over the Vatican's insistence that condoms spread, rather than

> restrict the spread of, HIV.

>

> While the World Health Organisation unveils a scheme today for the annual

> World Aids Day that it calls " 3 in 5 " - aiming to provide the latest

> anti-retroviral drugs to 3 million people by the end of 2005 - the UN

> secretary-general, Kofi Annan, has spoken of his frustration at trying to

> get the healthy to help the sick.

>

> The statistics are numbing. More than 42 million people are infected with

> HIV worldwide, of whom 26.6 million live in sub-Saharan Africa. The

largest

> number of infections is in South Africa, where about five million, or one

in

> 10 citizens, is HIV-positive. And a combination of unprotected sex and

drug

> abuse is fuelling an explosion of the epidemic around the world. And since

> you started reading this article, 20 people have become infected with HIV.

>

> Yet in the West, being HIV-positive is no longer the death sentence that

it

> was in 1983, when doctors had little chance of preventing the infection

> turning into full-blown Aids, at which point a patient would typically

live

> for less than a year.

>

> Now, modern drugs mean HIV has become a disease that one can live with.

The

> drugs bring unpleasant side-effects, such as nausea, occasional

> hallucinations and, in some cases, a strange redistribution of fat around

> the body. But you can live with them, for years - perhaps indefinitely.

>

> In Africa, those treatments have been too rarely available. The WHO

> estimates that 4.2 million people need anti-retrovirals in sub-Saharan

> Africa; but only 50,000 get supplies.

>

> Mr Annan thinks many political leaders do not care enough to fight the

> disease, which has killed 28 million people since it was first reported.

>

> " I am not winning the war because I don't think the leaders of the world

are

> engaged enough, " he said. " I feel angry, I feel distressed, I feel

helpless.

> What is lacking is political will. "

>

> Only one thing - the use of condoms - dramatically reduces the spread of

> HIV. (Needle swapping programs for intravenous drug users also work, but

on

> a smaller scale.) And only one thing - anti-retroviral drugs (often called

> " triple-therapy cocktails " ) - makes it possible to live with HIV.

>

> Given those facts, you might expect the world's leaders to focus on them.

Yo

> u'd be wrong. And since you started reading this article, 30 people have

> become infected with HIV.

>

> Catholics for a Free Choice, a pressure group, said yesterday it would

begin

> an advertising campaign against the policies of the church - which has

> millions of followers in Aid-hit countries - saying " Good Catholics Use

> Condoms " as " a direct challenge to the cardinals and bishops who recently

> claimed that condoms were helping to spread HIV/Aids " .

>

> The Vatican supported that bizarre claim in October, saying that condoms

had

> tiny holes which allowed the virus to pass through - so that to use them

> would encourage its spread. The WHO angrily called the advice " incorrect "

> and " dangerous " ; Catholics for a Free Choice called the Vatican's policy

" a

> disaster " .

>

> The lack of availability of treatments for those who are infected could be

> called a disaster too - though it has not resulted from any dogma.

Instead,

> it grows from a fundamental dispute between the giant pharmaceuticals

> companies, the only organisations able to rapidly and effectively research

> new therapies, and the governments of the countries which need them.

Western

> governments have tried to please both sides, and generally failed.

>

> The drug companies want to price the drugs to fund the expensive research

> needed to develop the next generation - and perhaps find a chink in HIV's

> armour that might lead to a vaccine, or a cure.

>

> But African countries cannot afford those prices, and have sought ways

> around the companies' patents to make generic versions of the drugs -

> exactly the same chemicals, but without the brand name. That led to

threats

> of trade wars.

>

> Former US president Bill Clinton set up a deal in October for four

> drug-makers in South Africa and India to sell generic versions of

> anti-retroviral treatments for a quarter of the price of the patented

> version.

>

> Dr Bernard Pécoul of the medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières said:

" One

> pill, twice a day at this reduced price is exactly what is needed to

rapidly

> expand the numbers of people receiving anti-retroviral treatment in

> developing countries. With that announcement, the WHO's '3 by 5' objective

> becomes much more feasible. "

>

> Feasible, yes. But will it happen - and by the time it does, will even

more

> people need the treatment?

>

> Meanwhile, the search for better treatments goes on. " We've been saying

that

> a vaccine is five to 10 years away for 15 years, " said Ms Price. " But it

is

> looking more realistic that we will [have one] in the next five years. "

And

> since you began reading this article, more than 40 people have been

infected

> with HIV - and more than 20 have died from Aids.

>

> BOTSWANA: MEDICAL STAFF POACHED BY THE WEST

>

> BY AFRICAN standards Botswana is a success story. Rich in diamonds and

with

> potential for tourism, it is relatively prosperous. Transparency

> International ranks it among the least corrupt countries in the world.

>

> Yet nowhere is the devastation wreaked by Aids more evident than in

> Botswana. When Kofi Annan, the United Nations secretary general, warned

last

> week of the " genocide of a generation " he must surely have had this small

> southern African nation in mind. More than 35 per cent of a population of

 

> 1.6 million are HIV-positive. That makes Botswana the country with the

> highest infection rate in the world. In the sexually active age group, (15

> to 49), the infection rate is close to 40 per cent.

>

> By 2010, half of all children in the country will be Aids orphans, and the

> average life expectancy will have fallen from 47 to 27. Aids is killing

the

> people Botswana needs to mine its diamonds and teach in its schools. The

> 6,000-strong Botswana police force loses 10 people a month to the virus

and

> the army also has high rates of infection

>

> Unlike many African leaders, Botswana's President Festus Mogae has taken

the

> lead in mobilising his people to fight Aids and has spearheaded Africa's

> first antiretroviral drugs programme. But Botswana's nurses, doctors,

> pharmacists and other health workers qualified to run such a programme are

> leaving. Britain, America and other European countries have poached them.

> Botswana recently lost 130 nurses to Britain and the country's

6,000-strong

> nursing workforce is not large enough to deal with the country's health

> needs. Only 9,000 out of a possible 110,000 patients have been enrolled on

> the antiretroviral programme.

>

> Mompati Merafhe, the Foreign Minister, has raised the issue of poaching

with

> the British Government. To the private agencies that recruit the staff, he

> said: " How heartless can you be? Why do you recruit medical personnel from

> countries which are so afflicted by Aids? " At Princess Marina Hospital in

> the capital, Gaborone, 3,000 patients are enrolled on a programme but

there

> are only 30 nurses trained to run it.

>

> Mr Mogae has pursued other avenues. He has told his ministers to include

> Aids awareness in every speech. " Even when opening a building, the

President

> has instructed us to talk about Aids " Mr Merafhe said. The President had

an

> Aids test to try to remove the stigma. He admits that the taboo about Aids

> hampers efforts to combat it. " People are not willing to talk about the

> HIV/Aids pandemic " he said.

> 7 December 2003 00:02

>

>

>

>

>

>

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