World rallies in war against Aids

Tens of thousands of Aids activists and health workers rallied worldwide today to mark World Aids Day and officials announced new initiatives and millions of pounds in new funding to combat the disease that has infected 40 million people, and kills more than 8,000 sufferers everyday.

The World Health Organisation and UNAIDS promised cheaper drugs, simpler treatment regimens and more money as part of a major campaign launched in Nairobi to provide three million HIV-infected people with the latest drugs available by the end of 2005,.

WHO also certified a new, innovative generic drug for use in treating HIV. The tablet combines three essential anti-retroviral drugs into one pill that is taken twice a day. WHO and UNAIDS promised to promote international agreements to streamline treatment programmes.

“In two short decades, HIV/Aids has become the premiere disease of mass destruction,” said Dr Jack Chow, the assistant director-general of WHO. “The death odometer is spinning at 8,000 lives a day and accelerating.”

Medecins sans Frontieres, an aid agency which has led efforts to simplify HIV treatment, welcomed the announcement, but said funding will be critical to the initiative’s success.

“The treatment has to be free, if the treatment is not free they will not meet their goals,” Dr Morten Rostrup, president of group’s international council, said.

Thousands of activists joined marches and a large rally in Nairobi to show support for people infected with HIV and to demand access to essential drugs.

“It is depleting our stock of knowledge and re-allocating family and national budgets,” President Mwai Kibaki said. ”Indeed, this disease could lead to the collapse of some economies in the next few generations. We, therefore, owe it to humanity to fight this disease relentlessly.”

In Zambia, US Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson appealed for a redoubling of efforts against HIV, saying Africa – the world’s hardest-hit continent – cannot fight the pandemic alone.

“This war has caused more casualties than any other war,” Thompson said. “We need America, the European Union and everybody. Nobody is going to be spared unless we all come together in the fight against this disease.”

Former South African President Nelson Mandela urged the world to fight the stigma associated with HIV, saying it was stopping people from going for testing and treatment.

“That is a tragic mistake, because when you do that, you make the people that are suffering feel like they are not human beings,” Mandela said in Cape Town. ”Many will die because of feeling less than human.”

More than 40 million people are infected with HIV and three million have died in 2003, according to UNAIDS. WHO estimates more than five million HIV patients need anti-retroviral drugs, but fewer than 400,000 currently have access to them.

Anti-retroviral drugs allow HIV patients to live a relatively normal life by preventing them from developing full-blown Aids. While the drugs improve patients’ health, they remain infected and can transmit the disease.

The Indian government announced plans to spend £25 million to provide free anti-retroviral drugs to 100,000 Aids patients, a ”significant scale-up” in the fight against the disease in the country that has the world’s second largest number of HIV-infected people.

Until now, the Indian government has focused on prevention, but starting next April, it will offer free drugs at government hospitals.

In Beijing, health workers hit the streets teaching prevention in a country whose leaders have promised an aggressive fight against the disease. Citing a new survey, the China Daily newspaper said 840,000 people in China were HIV-positive and 80,000 had developed Aids.

The British government said Monday it will double its funding to UNAIDS next year to £6 million.

“HIV/Aids destroys families and threatens to breakdown the fabric of whole societies, but I believe the challenges ahead can be met,” said International Development Secretary Hilary Benn.

Despite the provision of free anti-retroviral drugs in Botswana, people are reluctant to know their status because of stigma and discrimination, officials said.

Botswana’s President Festus Mogae told a gathering that people must take responsibility for utilising the free anti-retroviral therapy, HIV testing and the prevention of mother to child transmission services that are available.

“Unless we take it upon ourselves to use condoms and prevent HIV infection, we have only ourselves to blame for our plight,” Mogae said.

Malawi’s government pledged to provide free Aids medicine to 50,000 people by 2005. Funding is being provided by the Geneva-based Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria, Vice President Justin Malewezi said without providing details.

In Liberia, a nation struggling to emerge from 14 years of war, US Ambassador John Blaney called peace the main prerequisite for starting to combat Aids – a pandemic spread in warring West African nations by fighters, and the widespread rape of women and girls.

Even nations with just a smattering of Aids cases held events aimed at boosting awareness.

In Albania, which has registered just 116 cases since 1993, scores of high school students marched down Tirana’s main street, holding candles and a banner that read: “Protect Yourself and Others.”

In Bosnia, which has recorded only 64 cases of AIDS since 1986, deputy foreign minister Lidija Topic, who helps oversee an HIV/aids panel, still “needs to undertake various measures in battling this disease.”