AIDS Treatment Shortage Threatens Africa
Posted on: Sunday, 19 July 2009, 06:45 CDT
Doctors Without Borders warned Saturday that thousands of lives are endangered and the progress of treating AIDS in Africa is at risk of being reversed because of a chronic shortage of drugs that treat the disease.
Some clinics have stopped accepting new patients in recent weeks, Eric Goemaere, medical coordinator in South Africa, told The Associated Press.
He blamed the apathy of governments, donors and organizations they work with for the shortage, as well as the global economic meltdown.
"There's no doubt people will die as a consequence. It's a catastrophe in the making," Goemaere said before the opening of a four-day international AIDS conference in Cape Town.
The six African countries affected are Zimbabwe, Uganda, Congo, Malawi, Guinea and South Africa, with the last suffering the highest rate of AIDS infection in the world.
A total of 33 million people worldwide were living with HIV at the end of 2007, according to the World Health Organization. Two-thirds of them live in sub-Saharan Africa.
According to Mit Philips of the MSF research center in Brussels, The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has not received three to four billion dollars of promised funding.
"Some countries have committed but have not paid and there's a lot of uncertainty at an international level whether the Global Fund will get the money it needs," she said in a telephone interview.
Philips said that the fund has already slashed 10 percent from grants already approved last year.
The fund's Web site said that since its creation in 2002, it has approved a total of $15.6 billion for over 572 programs in 140 countries.
Philips said that there have been no promised increases in funds from the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, which was a project of former President George W. Bush that is credited to saving millions of lives.
President Barack Obama promised during his campaign trail to expand the program by a billion dollars a year. Philips said that this fund has remained flat. Goemaere said organizations using the project's funds in Uganda have been told to stop taking on new patients.
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On the Net:
- Doctors Without Borders
- World Health Organization
- The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria
Source: redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports
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