As South Africa defended its policy of denying Aids drugs to its population at a conference on the disease in Durban on Tuesday, the head of the UN’s World Health Organisation said the government’s strategy was wrong.
In an interview with AFP, Lee Jong-wook also compared the worldwide Aids crisis to ”Armageddon”, and said a massive increase in efforts to combat it was required, especially for Africa.
”In the African continent it would be wrong to talk about prevention, voluntarily counseling and testing, when people are actually dying. You have to provide treatment as well as prevention,” said Lee, who took over as head of the Geneva-based agency last month.
South Africa has one of the highest Aids rates in the world, with the UNAids agency estimating 360 000 deaths in 2001 — an average of nearly 1 000 per day.
The government has come under heavy criticism for failing to adopt a national treatment plan for HIV/Aids sufferers, choosing instead to focus on ”nutritious diets” as a way to fight the disease for those infected.
But Lee said this was inadequate to deal with an epidemic he decribed as ”a global security issue”.
He pledged that the WHO would step up its battle against HIV and Aids, mobilising all available resources.
Nearly 50-million people are infected with HIV/Aids worldwide, with 27-million carriers of the virus on the African continent alone, he said.
”They are staggering numbers. We have to scale up the disease control in a major, major way,” he said.
The average life expectancy in many African countries has declined to 45 or 46 years, and for the first time global population growth has been stopped because of the epidemic, he said.
”Losing this battle is not an option,” Lee said.
Yet he said HIV/Aids was, wrongly, no longer treated a major international issue, despite the death toll in the developing world still being in the millions.
”It’s difficult because nowadays, we don’t talk about Aids in Europe and North America, because as long as you take medicine you can stay alive and lead almost a normal life,” he noted.
But the availability of drugs was a huge problem in poorer countries.
”We have to make drugs, real drugs, available to people in the needy countries,” he said.
In this, it was necessary to cooperate with the big pharmaceutical companies, and avoid hurting their interests because any reluctance to develop new drugs would damage the fight in the long-term, he said.
”We have to count on the research-based pharmaceutical industry to develop new anti-retroviral drugs. So we have to really encourage them to continuously develop new medicines, and at the same time vaccines.”
”In Europe you really have to emphasise on prevention, because those who need treatment are getting their medicines. So here you really have to talk about prevention to the young population.”
While the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (Sars) was now under control, Lee cautioned any premature conclusion that the fight against the virus had been won.
We ”have to be prepared if it comes back”, he said.
He also criticised China’s initial reaction to hide the scale of the Sars outbreak there, but hailed Beijing’s later turnaround, when it openly acknowledged its magnitude and seriousness.
”Clearly the big lesson is that when we have this kind of problem, we have to act very quickly and openly, in a transparent way. That’s the only way to solve the problem. Hiding it under the rug is not the solution,” he noted.
The Helsinki anti-tobacco conference follows the acceptance of the WHO’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) by its 192 member countries in May, but Lee said the battle against the tobacco industry had only just begun.
”The implementation of the FTCT is a very daunting task, people should not underestimate the challenges,” he noted.
”The implementation at the country level requires sustained input, which means will, and also resources. This will not be finished in five or 10 years, but more like 10 to 20 years.”
He however had no doubt that the WHO and the anti-tobacco activists would win the battle on tobacco in the end ”because we are right.” – Sapa-AFP