HEALTH: New AIDS Drugs to be Presented at Int’l Meet in Spain

By Tito Drago Reprint | | Print |

Tito Drago

MADRID, Jul 4 2002 (IPS) - Promising new medications will be presented at the 14th International AIDS Conference, to run Jul 7-12 in Barcelona, Spain, providing a glimmer of hope in a world where less than two percent of all people testing positive for the AIDS virus currently receive medical treatment.

The characteristics of a new medication against AIDS (Acquired Immuno-Deficiency Syndrome) to be presented at the coming United Nations conference were described by Joseph María Gatell, a member of the conference organising committee.

AIDS is caused by the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), which destroys helper T-cells, a kind of lymphocyte or white blood cell. When enough T-cells are destroyed, the immune system is weakened, and people develop AIDS, which means they become susceptible to potentially life-threatening viral or bacterial infections.

Since AIDS was discovered in 1981, it has killed more than 20 million people worldwide, and projections of future mortality rates have doubled since the AIDS conference held two years ago in Durban, South Africa.

Gatell said researchers hope the experimental AIDS drug T-20 will benefit people whose HIV infections have become resistant to other medications. Unlike current AIDS drugs that target HIV once it has already entered cells, the fusion inhibitor T-20 works by preventing HIV from entering cells in the first place.

In addition, the potency of AIDS therapies will be increased, and their toxicity reduced, meaning that in the not-so distant future, “the concept of eradicating the virus could begin to be discussed again,” said Gatell. In other words, treatment would begin to aim for a cure, rather than merely controlling a patient’s viral load, as is currently the case.

According to the report drawn up by the joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) for the Barcelona gathering, only 730,000 – less than two percent – of the 40 million people living with HIV around the world are receiving medical treatment. Of that proportion, 500,000 live in industrialised countries.

“Society must understand that despite the new treatments, AIDS still kills,” said Francisco Parras, the secretary of Spain’s National AIDS Plan.

The UNAIDS report confirms that Africa has borne the brunt of the epidemic, with 28.5 million HIV-positive adults and children in the sub-Saharan region, compared to 5.6 million in south and southeast Asia, and two million in Latin America and the Caribbean. In some countries, AIDS is already the leading cause of death.

Mortality rates have not levelled off, but are still rising, and are expected to continue doing so.

UNAIDS predicts that over the next 18 years, 68 million people will die of AIDS in the 45 hardest-hit countries – five times more than the total number of victims claimed in the first 20 years of the epidemic.

Research and production of affordable medicines is necessary but not sufficient for fighting the disease, said José Luis García, the coordinator of the projects in Mozambique run by the Spanish NGO Ayuda en Acción.

García said it must be kept in mind that Africa accounts for 70 percent of all HIV-positive patients and 80 percent of those killed by AIDS worldwide last year, even though the population of that continent amounts to less than 10 percent of the global population.

“AIDS cannot be separated from underdevelopment,” said García. “It is no coincidence that the epidemic has been ‘fattened up’ in the world’s most impoverished countries.”

He urged the world’s wealthy countries “to forgive, once and for all, the foreign debt of these countries, to allow more fair competition for their products, and to stop building walls against immigrants” from poor regions.

Scientific papers and the results of new treatment options and prevention programmes will be presented at the Barcelona conference.

One of the studies announced researched the nutritional value, cost and preparation time of breastmilk substitutes for feeding babies of mothers with AIDS in Africa, and another focused on the participation of men in programmes aimed at preventing mother-to- infant HIV transmission.

Special attention will be paid to the question of strategies aimed at bringing down the prices of antiretroviral drugs, such as the creation of a patent fund, the production of cheap generic drugs in several countries of the developing South, and donations by South African pharmaceutical companies.

But the participants will not only discuss the developing world. Another issue on the agenda will be the harsh anti-drug laws that are contributing to the spread of AIDS among the prison population in the state of New York.