BLANTYRENews (Updated June
12, 2011)
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By Patrick Worsnip
Jun 9, 2011
(Reuters) - World leaders
at a U.N. AIDS summit launched a plan on Thursday to try to eliminate by 2015
most new HIV infections among children, who inherit the condition from already
infected mothers.
The campaign was launched
as the leaders also agreed on a target of reaching 15 million people with HIV
treatment, more than double the number who currently get it, also by 2015.
Both goals were announced
just weeks after groundbreaking new data showed that early treatment of the
human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, which causes AIDS, can cut its
transmission to a sexual partner by 96 percent.
In 2009, some 370,000
children were born with HIV, or one nearly every minute -- the vast majority of
them in 22 countries, almost all in
The UNAIDS organization
and the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which are
jointly managing the campaign launched on Thursday, said it would aim to reduce
the number of child infections by 90 percent by 2015.
"We believe that by
2015 children everywhere can be born free of HIV and that their mothers can
remain healthy," UNAIDS Executive Director Michel Sidibe told the launch
event, describing the plan as realistic and achievable.
UNAIDS Deputy Executive
Director Paul De Lay told Reuters the plan was based on providing pregnant women
with more information and on more effective use of anti-AIDS drugs.
"BEGINNING OF THE
END"
UNAIDS officials said
funding from all sources for prevention of mother-child transmission of HIV was
currently running at some $500 million a year. They said a total of $2.5 billion
more would be needed by 2015 to achieve the campaign's target of eliminating
mother-to-child HIV infections.
"Developed countries
already do this," U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the meeting.
"But we cannot rest until this is true for our whole world."
U.S. Global AIDS
Coordinator Eric Goosby said the
Achieving the goal could
be "the beginning of the end of the story, because that opens the prospect
for an AIDS-free generation," Michel Kazatchkine, head of the Global Fund
to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, told Reuters.
Meanwhile, a declaration
agreed by the 140-nation U.N. summit commits governments to "the target of
working toward 15 million people living with HIV on antiretroviral treatment by
2015."
The declaration is
expected to be adopted on Friday at the end of the three-day summit, which was
held close to the 30th anniversary of the discovery of AIDS.
Some 6.6 million were
receiving antiretroviral treatment in low- and middle-income countries at the
end of 2010, according to U.N. figures.
Aid group Medecins Sans
Frontieres (MSF) called the pledge a "critical step," but said
governments needed to take "immediate concrete action" to make the
target a reality.
"There are 9 million
people waiting for HIV treatment today," Tido von Schoen-Angerer of MSF
said in a statement. "This whole AIDS summit will have been a farce if we
don't see real plans to ramp up treatment so we can get ahead of the wave of new
infections."
(Editing by Vicki Allen)
(AFP) – 9 June, 2011
BLANTYRE
Instead, the government
will hand out a monthly "nutrition food bag" equivalent to $35 (26
euros), said Mary Shaba, secretary for nutrition, HIV and AIDS.
The scheme was launched in
2007, but was grossly abused with hundreds of workers claiming to have HIV in
order to cash in on the payment, she said in a statement.
"The patients will
now receive a nutrition food bag instead, as the money was not spent on its
intended purpose to buy extra food and improve nutrition," she said.
"Some people used the
money to buy beers and go out with prostitutes, further spreading the
virus," said
Half of
Around 14 percent of the
country's population is HIV positive. The pandemic, which kills over 85,000
people a year due to AIDS-related illness, has cut life expectancy in the
southern African nation to 36.
The government says it now
provides free AIDS drugs to 366,000 people, from 5,000 in 2004.
Copyright © 2011 AFP. All
rights reserved.
By Pierre-Antoine Donnet (AFP)
– 9 June, 2011
UNITED
NATIONS — African leaders on Wednesday called for greater resources to battle
the AIDS pandemic at a summit where UN leader Ban Ki-moon set a target of ending
new infections by the end of the decade.
Thirty presidents and
heads of government were at the summit marking the 30th anniversary of the
discovery of AIDS, which will set a target figure for the numbers who will
receive retroviral treatment in coming years.
More than six million
people currently get drugs to keep AIDS and HIV at bay. But more than nine
million still do not get the treatment and an estimated 1.8 million people a
year are still dying from AIDS.
Some 34 million people
around the world have AIDS, according to UN figures, and about half do not know
they have the disease.
US President Barack Obama,
who did not attend the United Nations summit, urged more governments to get
involved and coordinate more efficiently to create greater awareness about the
virus and its victims.
"No nation can do
this alone," he said in a statement. "Together, we can resolve to meet
our shared responsibilities. Together, we can come closer to our vision of a
world without HIV/AIDS."
"Thanks to an
aggressive global response, fewer people are being infected, a diagnosis is no
longer a death sentence and more people with HIV/AIDS are living long, vibrant
lives," Obama said.
"But so long as tens
of millions of people live with this devastating disease, and so long as nearly
two million people die from AIDS-related diseases every year, we cannot and will
not rest."
African presidents said
they were making spectacular progress, with the number of new infections in the
continent brought down from 2.2 million a year in 2001 to 1.8 million in 2009.
But they added that
"The international
community cannot remain deaf to the silent whispers for help from the
disadvantaged countries,"
"Conflicts can be
addressed through political dialogue. The same cannot be true for HIV and AIDS.
It simply does not have a cure," he added.
"To say that adequate
funding is critical to the success of our HIV and AIDS response is an
understatement," said
"Many countries,
including mine, can neither achieve the targets we have set for ourselves 10
years ago, nor the Millennium Development Goals, without the support of our
development partners," the Nigerian leader added.
The summit final statement
is to set out the target number of people who will get AIDS drugs. Health groups
have joined poorer nations in pressing for rich countries to commit to pay for
drugs for all nine million sufferers that still do not get treatment.
The UN secretary general
said that the international goal must now be to eliminate Acquired Immune
Deficiency Syndrome by 2020 -- "zero new infections, zero stigma and zero
AIDS-related deaths."
Ban also said that
"bold" action was required by the international community, but also
highlighted how perceptions of the disease and its sufferers have changed in the
past 30 years.
"Many of you remember
the early days in the 1980s. The terrible fear of a new plague. The isolation of
those infected. Some would not even shake hands with a person living with
HIV," Ban said.
"If we are to
relegate AIDS to the history books we must be bold. That means facing sensitive
issues, including men who have sex with men, drug users and the sex trade,"
he added.
"I admit those were
not subjects I was used to dealing with when I came to this job. But I have
learned to say what needs to be said because millions of lives are at
stake."
Ban called on partners to
"come together in global solidarity as never before," in a bid for
universal access to treatment by 2015 and efforts to lower costs.
Mathilde Krim, founder of
The Foundation for AIDS Research, said that 30 years ago no one would have
predicted the scope of the AIDS tragedy -- which has killed more than 25 million
people, including one million in the
She warned that with 7,000
new infections each day there is still a huge battle ahead.
"We are still losing
ground to HIV and we are still losing the battle with HIV," she said.
"There are more infections than people put under treatment."
Copyright © 2011 AFP. All
rights reserved.
By Tim Witcher (AFP) –
10 June, 2011
UNITED NATIONS — A new
condom home delivery service in India and the production of billions of extra
contraceptives around the world highlight the breakthrough of condoms in helping
put a brake on the AIDS pandemic, experts say.
An AIDS summit on Friday
gave the most explicit UN backing yet to the use of condoms. Negotiators said
they had to overcome fierce opposition from the
Instead of talking simply
about the importance of abstinence and fidelity, the statement stresses the
"correct and consistent use of condoms." The
"It is a first at the
UN General Assembly," said a diplomat who took part in two months of
hard-fought negotiations on the text.
"We are very happy
about this. It is very explicit and will definitely help our work to overcome
resistance and fears about condoms," said George Tembo, head of the
AIDS/HIV department at the UN Population Fund.
The global need for
condoms to combat HIV and for family planning has shot up from an estimated 13
billion in 2004 to about 19 billion in 2010, according to the UN Population
Fund.
Tembo said the UN agency
gave out about 3.2 billion condoms in target countries in 2010, up from 2.7
billion the year before.
The condoms will initially
be delivered to homes in 17 Indian provinces covering an approximate population
of 200 million people "and will be scaled up to cover the entire country
soon," the minister said.
A similar effort is
gathering pace in many countries, especially in
In
It helps, he said, but
There were 33,000
AIDS-related deaths in 2010 and 50,000 new infections said Fouda. "We now
have 305,000 children made orphans because of HIV and AIDS."
Tembo at the UNFPA said
governments and activists are slowly overcoming religious and social resistance
to the use of condoms.
"It is not just
distributing them, you have to make sure people know about them and know how to
use them," he said. "Otherwise they are just left to melt in the
sun."
So the UN Population Fund
encourages social workers to get out to markets, pop festivals and sporting
events such as last year's football World Cup in South Africa, to show people
how to use prophylactics.
The increased use and
other efforts by governments and doctors have been generally hailed at the
summit, which has set a target of getting drugs to all AIDS sufferers by 2015.
Is it enough?
"We must face the
fact that all these efforts have yet to turn the tide of this epidemic. Three
decades on, the rates of new infection still outpace treatment intervention,
thereby compelling us to do more,"
Copyright © 2011 AFP. All
rights reserved.
By Pierre-Antoine Donnet (AFP)
– 8 June, 2011
UNITED NATIONS — The
cost of drugs used to keep AIDS at bay will keep falling because of the huge
demand from millions of sufferers desperate for the lifeline, experts said at
the United Nations on Tuesday.
But nations still wrangled
ahead of a major three day AIDS summit over how many people will get treatment
in coming years.
The summit of about 30
presidents and government leaders must set the future direction of global AIDS
policies. Pop stars such as Alicia Keys and Annie Lennox joined pressure groups
in demanding rich nations pay the money needed to treat millions more sufferers.
The market economy will
drive down the prices of the retrovirals used to keep millions alive now,
according to Morolake Odetoyinbo, a board member of the Global Fund to fight
AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria from
The cost "can only
keep falling because they are trying to get more people on treatment, which
means there is a bigger demand and that big demand will drive down the
prices," she told AFP.
Odetoyinbo, founder of the
Positive Action for Treatment Access group in
There are an estimated 34
million people living with AIDS and more than nine million are still not getting
treatment, according to UN statistics. About 6.6 million people are getting
drugs and the rest do not know they have AIDS.
The annual cost of
retrovirals was about 10,000 dollars in 2001 but has tumbled to about 67 dollars
a year, according to Sharonann Lynch, an expert for the Medecins Sans Frontieres,
or Doctors Without Borders, group.
"Cost is
unfortunately the over-riding factor in terms of whether indeed we will be
getting the remaining nine million people on treatment who need it today in
order to live," Lynch said.
"The question of cost
is so important that it's actually driving poor decisions in terms of whether
governements participating will take the necessary steps and make the necessary
financial investments so that we can finally break the back of this
epidemic," the expert said.
Going into the summit, no
agreement had been reached on the final communique which was to set the numbers
who will receive treatment and how it will be paid for.
The UN Security Council on
Tuesday passed a resolution calling for a coordinated international response to
the AIDS pandemic, which it said was a threat to international peace and
security.
But pressure groups said
rich countries -- Europe and
In a sign of the anger of
many non-government groups, the AIDES and Act Up Paris groups accused
Celebrities have also
spoken out strongly in the AIDS campaign.
"Negligent non-action
as a response to the HIV-AIDS epidemic, as it affects women and girls is just as
bad, just as accountable as criminal action," said Scottish singer Annie
Lennox told a symposium on women and AIDS at the UN headquarters.
American star Alicia Keys
said world leaders had the means to save millions of lives in
Copyright © 2011 AFP. All
rights reserved.