22 million dead
Cunningham, Francis Xavier
THE LAST WORD 22 MILLION DEAD Francis Xavier Cunningham iscussions of the hiv/aids pandemic in Africa invariably focus on the high cost of antiretroviral (ARV) drug therapy. ARV is an effective...
...Meanwhile, only 1 percent of HIV-positive Africans receive ARVs...
...If, as part of a global initiative against hiv/aids, the United States were to take responsibility for procuring ARVs from drug companies for global distribution, very attractive prices could be negotiated...
...Still, the drug companies alone cannot ensure access to ARVs for all those who need them...
...Gates had been quoting from a U.S...
...A global offensive against hiv/aids led by the United States would have the clout to overcome serious political barriers...
...What if we were to forgo some tax cuts...
...The administration's 2001 tax cuts will shrink tax revenues by an estimated $1.3 trillion over ten years, and that does not include the president's most recent tax-reduction proposals...
...Senegal has held the rate among adults to 0.5 percent...
...UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has estimated that $10 billion will be needed annually to fight aids globally, and even that will fall far short...
...During a trip to India late last year, Bill Gates was well received by India's elites for praising the country's high-tech potential...
...If we do, we will lose all moral claim to global leadership...
...In Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, prevalence in women at prenatal clinics was 15 percent in 2001, down from 24 percent in 1995...
...When a family member becomes ill, women are the caregivers...
...Furthermore, this would epitomize the best features of free-enterprise capitalism, rather than the socialist approach of nationalizing the drug companies, as some have suggested...
...It is clear that a multiyear, global program in the $20-billion-a-year range can be carried out only by a worldwide consortium led by the United States and allied with the UN...
...The United States has an opportunity to demonstrate that, important as the struggle against world terrorism is, the struggle against hiv/aids is equally critical...
...One way to insure the spread of the virus is to accuse those who warn about it of heightening panic...
...It is clear a war on hiv/aids would not be a budget-buster...
...Expecting much more from for-profit drug companies is asking them to act against their own legitimate interests...
...it is simply a matter of deciding how to set our priorities...
...ARV is an effective tool in the fight against the disease, but it is terribly expensive...
...Nor, as a society, should we attempt to shift the burden of our collective responsibility onto the shoulders of one particular group...
...This is having profound social and economic effects in Africa, where women do most of the work on subsistence farms and are responsible for food preparation...
...Elsewhere, Brazil and Thailand have shown some success in fighting the virus...
...In South Africa, hiv prevalence in pregnant women fell to 15 percent last year, down from 21 percent in 1998...
...Some day our grandchildren will look back in shame and wonder how we could have allowed a known, treatable enemy to kill so many...
...government could probably negotiate prices that would be less than 10 percent over the base cost for producing the drugs...
...The implications are staggering...
...As the major purchaser who could guarantee continuing purchases over many years, the U.S...
...Yet aids can be beaten back: we have some very effective tools in education and prevention...
...Francis Xavier Cunningham, a retired Foreign Service officer, had assignments in Brussels, Manila, and Cairo.a, and Cairo...
...In sub-Saharan Africa, 58 percent of infected adults are women...
...The death toll from aids already stands at 22 million people...
...The plague is advancing quickly into China and India...
...In the United States, a year's regimen of brand-name ARVs costs between twelve and fifteen thousand dollars per patient...
...Americans are not unfamiliar with such sums...
...In the last decade, Uganda has driven down the hiv prevalence rate among pregnant women in its capital from 30 percent to 11 percent...
...government study which projects a rise in the number of Hrv cases in India from around 4 million to about 25 million in 2010...
...Forty-two million are currently living with hiv, and new infections are occurring at a rate of 5 million per year...
...We can no longer stand back and let this global pandemic run its course...
...Yet when he warned of the looming aids crisis, India's health minister accused him of "spreading panic...
...Imagine if we were able to avoid the war and a similar commitment could be made to stemming hiv/aids...
...drug manufacturers have devoted large sums of money to fight hiv/aids in developing countries by reducing the price of ARVs, investing in medical infrastructure and education programs, and even providing less expensive generic versions of the drugs the haunting fact remains that most families in the developing world simply cannot afford the drugs, even at discounted prices...
...The projected cost of war with Iraq, according to some knowledgeable experts, may run as high as $100 billion...
...While it is true that major U.S...
...In addition, they are more likely to be invested in the education of children than men are...
Vol. 130 • January 2003 • No. 2
