HEALTH-AFRICA: AIDS Activists Push For More Access to Drugs to Reduce Deaths

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By Joyce Muluma

NAIROBI, Sep 24 2003 (IPS) - "We want drugs! You talk as we die," were some of the angry voices by AIDS activists who protested Wednesday against failure by their governments to give them anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs).

Some rolled on the ground as others shouted and marched through the 13th International Conference on AIDS in Africa (ICASA), stopping at government, pharmaceutical and donor stands.

Donning T-shirts declaring their HIV status, the more than 100 activists under Pan-African HIV/AIDS Treatment Access Movement (PATAM), demanded drugs for people living with HIV/AIDS.

PATAM is a pan-African coalition of activists and people living with AIDS committed to mobilising governments and communities to ensure access to affordable HIV/AIDS treatment.

They called on governments to implement their national HIV/AIDS treatment plan in order to attain the World Health Organisation (WHO) goal of ensuring ARV medicine to 3 million people in developing countries by the end of 2005.

Some six million people in developing countries have HIV infections that require ARV treatment, but less than 300,000 are being treated.

In sub-Saharan Africa, where 29 million of the 40 million people with AIDS worldwide live, less than 50,000 have access to anti-retroviral therapy.

"I’m alive today because I have access to treatment, what of the thousands who have no access," said Prudence Mabele, of the South Africa-based Treatment Action Campaign.

Mercy Otim of Kenya Coalition for Access to Essential Medicines regretted that her country had no national ARV treatment plan, while "250,000 Kenyans require immediate treatment or face death as a result of government neglect".

Price of anti-retrovirals in Kenya has reduced from Ksh 6,000 (81 U.S. dollars) to Ksh 3,000 (41 U.S. dollars) per patient per month in the last one year, still an exorbitant figure for a majority of the 2.4 million people living with HIV/AIDS in the East African country.

A statement from PATAM attributes the lack of access to life-prolonging treatment to the lack of political will.

"We are faced with enormous barriers; national governments do not prioritise HIV/AIDS treatment; donor countries refuse to fulfil commitments to mobilise necessary resources, while pharmaceutical companies deny access to essential medicines and diagnostics by charging exorbitant prices," says part of the statement.

A UNAIDS report indicate that in early 2000, the price of Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy (HAART, also referred to as triple therapy) for one patient per year cost 10,000 -12,000 U.S. dollars. By the end of 2000, prices had declined to 500-800 U.S. dollars per person per year for ARV treatment in developing countries.

As of May this year, the least expensive brand name combination recommended by the World Health Organisation for low income countries was about 675 U.S. dollars per person per year, and the least expensive generic combination was just under 300 U.S. dollars per person per year.

Rights groups maintain that prices may drop, with the high prevalence rate of HIV/AIDS in developing countries.

Nevertheless, WHO’s Director of HIV/AIDS, Dr Paulo Teixeira, has reiterated his organisation’s commitment to access ARVs to the millions of people living with the disease in developing countries.

Early this week WHO declared a global health emergency for failure to deliver ARV therapy for AIDS for the millions of people who need it in poor countries.

"To deliver antiretroviral treatment to the millions who need it, we must change the way we think and change the way we act," said WHO Director-General, Dr Lee Jong-Wook. "Business as usual will not work. Business as usual means watching thousands of people die every day."

The ARV crisis manifested itself again on Sep 23 when over 200 Kenyans living with HIV/AIDS met in a "people’s tribunal" and passed a guilty verdict against the government and pharmaceutical companies.

They accused the government of Mwai Kibaki of indulging in "talk shows" instead of providing life-prolonging drugs to millions of people infected by the disease.

Chanting, "We want treatment now, we want treatment now," they pointed fingers at pharmaceutical companies for being interested in profit making and failing to make ARVs accessible to the poor.

The protestors met outside the venue of the on-going ICASA conference.