13/05/2004

'Access to Aids treatment is a human right'

Access to Aids treatment is a human right, 11 African health ministers said on Thursday as they launched a solemn appeal for urgent assistance from wealthy countries following a conference in Rome.

"We ask this in the name of a human right, which is called the right to treatment, in the name of intelligent globalisation, which should be equally capable of globalising solidarity," they said at the close of the two-day conference organised by the Community of Sant'Egidio here.

"We ask that the most developed countries mobilise economic and human resources to bring a halt to this extermination," the ministers said.

Their statement urged wealthy countries to help them improve access to "the high quality treatment demanded by this challenge" for Africa, the region of the world worst-hit by the Aids pandemic.

Addressing pharmaceutical companies, without naming them, the health ministers urged lower prices for antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) "to the point of being compatible with the weak resources of our countries".

"Aids is affecting the entire planet, but currently 70 percent of its victims die and are born in Africa," said the ministers from the Central African Republic, Congo, Ivory Coast, Ethiopia, Liberia, Malawi, Mozambique, Senegal, Sudan, Tanzania and Togo.

"The epidemic cuts down as many human lifes as a world war."

In sub-Saharan Africa around 26.6 million people were infected with HIV at the end of 2003, out of an estimated global tally of 40 million, according to United Nations estimates.

But only three percent of the 3.9 million Aids patients in Africa who could benefit from ARVs had access to them, due largely to prohibitive costs and structural constraints.

The Community of Sant'Egidio is a Roman Catholic organization dedicated to conflict resolution and assistance to the poor.