Estimated worldwide HIV infections: 47 603 380 as of 10.45am on Thursday, July 11
Poisonous: A United States newspaper quoted Minister of Health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang this week as saying that the drugs used to prevent transmission of HIV from mother to child are poisonous.”I’m forced to poison my people,” Tshabalala-Msimang reportedly told Newsday. The newspaper said she would only make nevirapine available because she was forced to do so by the Constitutional Court. Tshabalala-Msimang said she had been misquoted.
She said the only concern she had raised with the reporter was that the government had not been able to establish from the US Food and Drug Administration why the application for registration of nevirapine had been withdrawn in the US.
Treatments priced beyond Africa: Drug companies at the international Aids conference in Barcelona on Tuesday announced progress in developing innovative Aids therapies, but the good news is not meant for Africa. Most of the sophisticated new treatments will be priced out of the reach of developing countries, where 95% of those infected with the virus live.
At about $10 000 to $12 000 a year, some of the more promising drugs will be completely out of the reach of Africans, most of whom live on far less than a dollar a day.
Source: newsday.com, Reuters, Sapa
Gobbling up Aids: A New Zealand company said this week that United States authorities had approved extended trials of a new drug it claimed ”gobbles up” the virus that causes Aids. The Virionyx Corporation of Auckland said its HRG214 drug had successfully completed trials involving 18 volunteers with HIV/Aids at the Harvard University medical school. The US Food and Drug Admini- stration has approved further trials, during which 48 patients will be given twice-weekly injections of the drug, which is based on goat plasma.
UN report: The United Nations released a grim report this week warning that the Aids pandemic is still in its early stages. The report says that Aids has already caused economic growth to fall by as much as 4% in sub-Saharan Africa. With fewer people available to do agricultural work, malnutrition and hunger will follow. The study says that Aids has rapidly weakened the economic stability, national security, agricultural output and the capacity of governments to function adequately. Of the 40-million HIV-infected people in the world, it said only 700 000, or 1,75%, were receiving anti-HIV drugs at the end of last year. In Africa, fewer than 30 000 of the 28,5-million infected people were receiving anti-HIV treatment.
Source: Sapa, UNAids.org