14/04/2004

Italian college honors Sant'Egidio for African AIDS treatment program

ROME (CNS) -- The medical school of Italy's Aquila University will give its first award for organizations involved in health care in the developing world to the Rome-based Community of Sant'Egidio.

The award, to be presented April 23 at the university, honors the Catholic lay community for its program to treat people with HIV/AIDS in Mozambique and other parts of Africa.

The Sant'Egidio program is called DREAM, an acronym for Drug Resource Enhancement against AIDS and Malnutrition, and offers patients free of charge the full triple cocktail of antiretroviral drugs standard in Europe and North America, but virtually unknown in Africa.

The program also includes nutritional supplements, HIV testing and counseling, as well as health education and home-health visits to assist patients in following the treatment regime.

At an April 14 press conference announcing the prize, Ferdinando di Orio, president of the medical school, said, "There are two medical realities: one in the West, which is rich and well-equipped, and the other in the rest of the world, where even basic medicines are lacking."

The university, he said, encourages medical students to volunteer in developing countries as a way to enhance their professional skills and their personal commitment to serving others.

"DREAM interested us not only because of its humanitarian aim, but also because of its high medical and scientific standards," Di Orio said.

Most of the physicians, nurses and laboratory technicians working on the program in Mozambique are Sant'Egidio members from Italy and other parts of Europe who rotate in and out of Mozambique. They are involved in direct patient care as well as in training local health care workers, said Mario Marazitti, the community's spokesman.

While the Aquila award includes a "symbolic" cash prize, Marazitti said its real value lies in its recognition of the scientific value of the DREAM approach and in the collaboration the medical school has offered.

The DREAM program has offered HIV testing and counseling to close to 8,000 people in Mozambique since 2002 and is caring for about 4,300 HIV-positive patients in the country, the spokesman said.

The community is preparing to extend the program to South Africa, Malawi, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Angola and Swaziland by the end of the year, he said.

The first focus of the program, Marazitti said, is to prevent the transmission of the virus from HIV-positive mothers to their newborn babies by putting the mothers on the triple cocktail in the 25th week of pregnancy.

According to statistics compiled in late February, he said, 97 percent of the 418 babies born to HIV-positive mothers in the program were born without the virus; almost all of the children continued to be HIV-free at age 1.

Dr. Giovanni Guidotti, one of the physicians leading the program, said the results "demonstrate that we are not dreamers, but realists."

The survival rate of children born to mothers in the program "is higher than in the general population in Mozambique," where the infant death rate is 5 percent in the first year of life, he said.

Guidotti said the program also demonstrates the error of "cynical assumptions" that Africans could not or would not follow the strict regime associated with taking the triple cocktail.

As of late February, he said, the 1,729 patients taking the drugs had a 95 percent compliance rate with the regimen, a rate "close to or better than in Europe and America."

Guidotti said that as the health of the Mozambique patients improves "one of the big problems now is helping them find jobs to support themselves and their families."

Marazitti said that working with an Indian pharmaceutical company that makes generic versions of the triple-cocktail drugs, the cost of the program is about $800 for each patient each year; the cost includes the drugs, regular laboratory tests and nutritional supplements.

The budget is just a fraction of what the cocktail alone costs in Europe and North America, he said, and it demonstrates that there is no reason for Africans to be given "second-class treatment" simply because of financial concerns.

The 30 million Africans infected with HIV/AIDS, he said, "are doctors, nurses, teachers and farmers. When they die, their countries die."

The Aquila prize, he said, "is a scientific recognition of a program that was begun with the belief that we did not have to watch Africa die."

Cindy Wooden