Open letter of People with HIV & AIDS
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to the Directors of WHO and UNAIDS
We, people living with HIV & AIDS, militants in organisations for the
defence of the dignity and right to health of all those infected, de-
mand from the leaders of concerned international organisations that
they carry out the following request with urgency, the fullest com-
mitment and adequate resources.
Today, in developing countries, the only treatments which would allow
us to live with the virus, antiretrovirals are inaccessible for rea-
sons above all related to pricing. We are fighting for the reduction
of these prices, and for access programmes to be set up in our coun-
tries. This is an essential fight, and we've only just started.
But parallel to this fight is another, at first glance easier, which
we call on to you to tackle face to face: there exists an antibiotic
treatment which can help us against many opportunistic infections:
cotrimoxazole (perhaps better-known under the brand-name Bactrim).
This treatment, the use of which is widespread across the world to
cure all sorts of infections, is not sufficiently prescribed to peo-
ple with AIDS. Physicians are unaware of its preventive interest
against opportunistic infections, and governments are still hesitat-
ing to systematise its dispensation to all people living with HIV,
even through it has long been proved highly efficacious against a
wide range of bacterial infections (especially pneumocci and salmo-
nella) as well as parasitic infections (especially toxoplasmosis and
isosporiasis).
For over 10 years, African countries have waited for research to con-
firm its efficacy on this continent, while in the North its prescrip-
tion had become routine. The results of this research have concluded,
in May 1999 in Ivory Coast, to the interest of cotrimoxazole as early
prophylaxis. In Harare a few months ago, an international expert con-
sultation - organised under the guidance of WHO and UNAIDS - con-
cluded unanimously on the urgency of wide and immediate prescription
of this treatment.
Still, concrete headway is not arriving. These recommendations have
not been properly publicised, and we are finding it worrisome that no
communication plan worth the name is being set by relevant interna-
tional organisations - before, during and after the International
Conference on AIDS and STDs which will take place in July in South
Africa. Yet more expert consultations is what is being prepared at
tremendous cost and waste of public resources, even though there have
been no new data since Harare and all aspects have been thoroughly
discussed, arriving at consensual working conclusions. Something con-
crete needs to be done, NOW, fifteen years late and before the month
of July.
Our brothers and sisters who are infected and left in ignorance, our
field physicians and nurses, all must be informed. Our governments
must be persuaded and mobilised. We need you, WHO and UNAIDS, start-
ing today, to carry this simple and essential message to interna-
tional fora and media: effective prevention of opportunistic infec-
tions by cotrimoxazole is possible, necessary, and urgent.
We will take stock of your response, Mrs Bruntland, Mr Piot, in Dur-
ban, as Directors respectively of WHO and UNAIDS, and before the
thousands of actors of the fight against AIDS who are due to attend.
This would be a mere first step, belated and insufficient but much
welcome, towards a true response to this disease which is decimating
our continent.
Signed by 23 signatories from 17 countries:
Courtesy of Jamie Uhrig
--
Claudio Schuftan
mailto:aviva@netnam.vn
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