Estimated Aids-related deaths in South Africa: 1Â 741Â 808 at 1.15pm on March 29
Compulsory Aids tests: Former United States president Bill Clinton this week said he supports mandatory HIV testing in countries with high prevalence, provided people are willing to participate in the testing programmes and that the country can provide access to anti-retroviral drugs and ensure HIV-positive residents would not experience discrimination.
‘We can save people’s lives and we can reduce the stigma,†said Clinton. ‘There is no way we are going to reduce the spread of this epidemic without more testing, because 90% of the people who are HIV-positive don’t know it.†He also said compulsory testing would be a waste of money in countries with low HIV prevalence, but that when a country’s prevalence rises above 5%, testing becomes an important resource in stemming the spread of the disease.
He announced that Lesotho would be the first country to participate in a universal testing programme, sponsored by the Clinton Foundation, and is expected to launch it this year. He said the Lesotho programme could serve as a test case to determine whether providing universal access to rapid HIV tests and anti-retrovirals could reduce a country’s HIV prevalence.
‘We must stop looking at testing as a burden. We must treat it as a public health issue … without shame,†said Clinton.
About 29% of adults in Lesotho are HIV-positive.
Source: Kaisernetwork.org
Estimated Aids-related deaths in South Africa: 1 728 643 at 4pm on March 15
Drugs not widely available: Major drug companies are still not making life-saving drugs available to millions of people with HIV/Aids in the developing world, according to the charity Médicins sans Frontières (MSF).
Basic three-drug cocktails in a single pill are slowly being rolled out to some who need them, but doctors fear many of those people will die within a few years if they cannot get hold of alternative drugs that are widely available in Western countries.
In Khayelitsha, Cape Town, where MSF started the treatment of poor people in South Africa, some have now been on a basic drug cocktail for four years. Long before that, however, resistance builds up — the virus in the body mutates to overcome the effects of the drug and the patient becomes sick again. In one of MSF’s programmes, 16% of patients now need what is known as ‘second line†drugs.
But MSF says some of the drugs they need are not available in Africa because manufacturing companies have not registered them here. Until a drug is registered, it cannot be approved by government authorities for use in that country.
In South Africa and Zimbabwe, where treatment programmes have been in place for several years, there is a critical and growing need for the drug Tenofovir. A manufacturer, Gilead, promised in December 2002 it would offer the drug at a reduced price in 68 developing countries and last March extended the list to a further 97. But the company has not registered the drug where it is needed, says Nathan Ford of MSF.
‘Companies gain good publicity for announcing discounts for the developing world, but their intentions have to be backed up by a proper commitment to actually make the drugs available,†writes Ford. —