13/05/2004

'Aids treatment is a human right'

Seventy percent of the world's Aids victims are born and die in Africa, African health ministers said at a conference in Rome, appealing to wealthy countries to mobilise resources to help the world's poorest continent take on the pandemic.

"Aids is affecting the entire planet, but currently 70% of its victims die and are born in Africa," said the ministers in a statement issued to close a two-day conference organized by the Community of Sant'Egidio.

"The epidemic cuts down as many human lifes as a world war," they said, urging "the most developed countries to mobilize economic and human resources to bring a halt to this extermination".

The ministers - from the Central African Republic, Congo, Ivory Coast, Ethiopia, Liberia, Malawi, Mozambique, Senegal, Sudan, Tanzania and Togo - made their appeal "in the name of a human right, which is called the right to treatment; in the name of intelligent globalization, which should be equally capable of globalizing solidarity".

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

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

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 UN estimates.

But only 3% 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.

Sant'Egidio meanwhile has presented a pilot programme it is using in Mozambique to fight the Aids pandemic.

The programme, called "Dream", makes HIV-positive pregnant women the focus of Aids treatment programmes and has had "the best results obtained up until now in sub-Saharan Africa in terms of treatment", according to programme coordinator Paola Germano.

Under the programme, which began two years ago, pregnant women are given free antiretrovirals to block the transmission of Aids to their babies.

"Since Dream's launch, 400 healthy children have been born from infected mothers", Germano said.

The Dream programme also tested some 7,000 people for HIV/Aids in the southern African country, where an estimated 14% of the population of 17 million are HIV-positive. Of those, 4,000 tested positive, and are now receiving either antiretrovirals or other forms of medical treatment, the organization said.

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