World 'has historic chance to halt Aids epidemic' :: Namibia Internet Gateway cc ::

Articles: World 'has historic chance to halt Aids epidemic'

Posted by admin on Wednesday, May 12, 2004 - 12:22 AM

The world has an unprec-edented opportunity to reverse the course of the Aids epidemic and change history, Lee Jong-wook, director-general of the World Health Organisation, said yesterday.
Introducing the 2004 World Health Report, which is devoted to the WHO's "3 by 5" initiative to put 3m Aids sufferers on anti-retroviral drugs by the end of 2005, Dr Lee said the report showed how prevention and treatment could halt the worst epidemic in centuries and save millions of lives. "This is a historic opportunity we cannot afford to miss," he said. Apart from the personal devastation caused by Aids, some countries in sub-Saharan Africa were facing economic collapse from the loss of prime-age adults including teachers and health workers. "No country can afford not to treat its people with Aids," Dr Lee said. An estimated 34m to 46m people are infected with the Aids virus, the vast majority in Africa, and almost 6m people in developing countries will die in the near future if they do not receive treatment, the report says. Thirty-four countries account for over 90 per cent of those needing treatment. Aids has already killed more than 20m people since it emerged in the early 1980s, accounting for 3m deaths last year. Only about 440,000 Aids victims in developing countries currently receive life-saving anti-retroviral drugs, of whom more than 300,000 are in Latin America rather than in harder-hit Africa and Asia. Richard Feachem, executive director of the United Nations-backed global fund on Aids, tuberculosis and malaria, said yesterday that finance and the cost of drugs, which could now be obtained for as little as $150 (€127, £85) per person a year, were no longer the binding constraints they once were. The main constraint was the capacity of countries to deliver drugs to those who needed them. The global fund hopes to raise "the lion's share", or about 60 per cent of the $5.5bn the WHO says is needed this year and next to finance the initiative. The rest is expected to come from bilateral and multilateral aid programmes, and from Aids-affected countries themselves. The five-year $15bn US Aids emergency relief plan launched this year, which aims eventually to treat 2m people with anti-retroviral drugs in 14 high-burden countries, might reach 1m Aids sufferers by the end of next year or a third of the WHO target, Dr Feachem said. The World Health Report 2004: Changing history. www.who.int/whr

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