Saturday, June 11, 2011

PEPFAR and AIDS future

Dear APVASCULAR.BLOGSPOT.COM,
Pinjala (pinjala@hotmail.com) has sent you an article from The Economist
online
Pinjala has also included the following message for you:
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This is important to know how the focus on the AIDS management is going to
change in the coming few years with the available funds from different
sources.
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Well, I declare!
Jun 9th 2011
MORE money, probably. That was the bottom line of the declaration that came
out of the UN General Assembly's high-level meeting on AIDS, which closed
on June 10th. It was, however, accompanied by a promise of more money for
real by PEPFAR, the American President's Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief,
and a series of PEPFAR's allies.The UN "recognised", in the nuanced
argot of diplomacy, an estimate made by scientists at its agency, UNAIDS,
that the amount of money which needs to be spent on AIDS per year in poor and
middle-income countries should reach something between $22 billion and $24
billion by 2015. However that recognition was prefaced, in a phrase that bore
the hallmarks of arm-wrestling behind the scenes, by a commitment only to
reach a "significant level" of annual global expenditure on the
disease.Not quite a target, then, but perhaps the best that could be expected
in these stringent times.
The General Assembly also said that the same year
should be the target for getting 15m of those infected onto the
antiretroviral drugs that can save their lives. That is less than half the
number, 34m, who currently carry HIV, but is in line with present World
Health Organisation thinking about who among the infected would actually
benefit from being on drugs. That thinking may change in light of recent
research which suggests that the drugs themselves stop the virus spreading,
by making those taking them less infectious. But, in the meantime, even
getting from the current 6.6m who receive treatment to 15m in the next four
years will be a step in the right direction.The declaration was also big on
helping those at particularly high risk, namely people who take recreational
drugs by injection (and thus risk using contaminated needles), prostitutes
and (a first in such a document) male homosexuals. It was biggest of all,
though, on helping women, particularly expectant mothers. It gave prominence
to the scandal that infection almost never passes from mother to child in
rich countries, because of  proper drug treatment, whereas such
transmission is still all too frequent in poorer parts of the world.In what
was undoubtedly no coincidence, PEPFAR announced that it would provide an
extra $75m for this particular cause. The Gates Foundation will chip in a
further $40m; Chevron (an oil company) $20m; and Johnson and Johnson (a drug
firm) $15m. The money will go to a plan cooked up by UNAIDS and PEPFAR, and
announced during the meeting, to try to crack the problem of mother-to-child
transmission by 2015.Progress, then. And, perhaps most important of all, a
reminder to the chancellories of the rich world that AIDS still needs their
attention, but that such attention is not futile. The UNAIDS study which came
up with the figure of $22 billion-$24 billion in 2015 also predicted that if
this money were deployed wisely, the amount that needed to be spent would
fall thereafter. An encouragement, surely, for a final push.
See the full article
http://www.economist.com/realarticleid.cfm?redirect_id=21519118
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