|
Only eighteen months. And in eighteen months DREAM (Drug Enhancement Resource against AIDS and Malnutrition) is emerging as the most effective module of intervention to guarantee free access to therapy in sub-Saharan Africa at bearable costs in organizing and executing the program with light structures and an holistic approach in fighting and radically opposing the effects of AIDS while at the same time fighting environmental degradation, Tbc, malaria and malnutrition. All of this at outstanding levels of excellency, not only providing the drugs but also every other element of the chain of treatment, from the molecular-biology labs to the periodical checks, to health education, all the way down to the constant adjustment of the therapy to fight the collateral effects of opportunistic and endemic deseases, like tbc, malaria, malnutrition and unsafe hygienic and sanitary conditions. All of this to prevent the risk of causing reactions of improper resistance to the therapy, risk that could emerge with a non differentiated therapy and without the support of the lab.
The results are: 97% of the children are born healthy from HIV/AIDS positive mothers treated with the triple therapy (ART) from the second quarter of pregnancy; 90% of survival and resumption of normal activities of daily life by people with full blown AIDS subjected to therapy; 95% of compliance with the therapy, a level higher than those obtained in Europe and North America in the regular assumption of anti-retroviral drugs by positive individuals.
Everything started in Mozambique, where the treatment centres are now 11. 7000 people have been checked, 3000 are presently assisted and 1000 of them are in HAART (Highly Active Anti Retro Viral Therapy). This is the highest known number of persons treated anywhere in Africa, where 30 million with HIV/AIDS are to be found, but none of them under treatment. From Mozambique DREAM is now moving into Malawi (with particular care to the malnutrition problem, due to famine), Guinea Bissau, Tanzania and Angola. It is also on the cards to start DREAM in South Africa on a partnership basis.
DREAM in fact not only works in preventing the transmission of the virus from mother to child and in protecting the fighting units of specialized operators (teachers, sanitary personnel, etc.) during the emergency period, but is also a replicable method, very suited to situations of poverty and lack of infrastructures so common in great parts of sub-Saharan Africa. This is why it is a module of intervention fine tuned to be rapidly deployed in the African continent and not only.
The Community of Sant'Egidio has taken up the alarm sounded by Kofi Annan on the risk of losing the battle against AIDS and supports the moral call to fight AIDS as an essential part of the war for human rights made by Nelson Mandela. The Community of Sant'Egidio, while sending an appeal to the world to accept at last the responsibility of guaranteeing access to treatment as a fundamental human right, is committed to show in practical terms the way to free millions of people from abandonment and AIDS,
This is a good news.
_______________________________________________________________________
COMUNITA' DI SANT'EGIDIO
Piazza di S. Egidio 3/a - 00153 Roma � Tel. 06 585661 � Fax. 06 5883625
www.santegidio.org - e-mail: [email protected]
|
