E-DRUG: ARV therapy in poor resource settings
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[The Lancet has 2 interesting articles in last friday's paper:
pp: 404
Viewpoint: Community-based approaches to HIV treatment in resource-poor
settings
Paul Farmer, Fernet Leandre, Joia S Mukherjee, Marie Sidonise Claude,
Patrice Nevil, Mary
C Smith-Fawzi, Serena P Koenig, Arachu Castro, Mercedes C Becerra,
Jeffrey Sachs, Amir
Attaran, Jim Yong Kim
http://www.thelancet.com/journal/vol/iss/full/llan.358.9279.editorial_and_re
view.17087.1
pp: 410
Viewpoint: Preventing antiretroviral anarchy in sub-Saharan Africa
A D Harries, D S Nyangulu, N J Hargreaves, O Kaluwa, F M Salaniponi
http://www.thelancet.com/journal/vol/iss/full/llan.358.9279.editorial_and_re
view.17088.1
The UK Guardian also had an article about the ARV programme in Nigeria.
Copied
as fair use. Crossposted from AF-AIDS. NN]
Nigeria Sets Pace in Fight Against AIDS
The Guardian (Lagos)
August 1, 2001
http://allafrica.com/stories/200108010254.html
Determined to frontally confront the HIV/AIDS scourge, Nigeria will soon
begin to treat with sophisticated virus-fighting drugs 15,000 of her three
million citizens believed to be infested with the AIDS virus.
Disclosing this on Monday, UN Secretary General's Special AIDS Envoy to
Africa, Stephen Lewis, said the programme is the largest in Africa.
"It is the government's intention to on September 1, begin a process of
antiretroviral treatment in Nigeria which will be, at least initially,
larger than anywhere else on the continent," Lewis added.
Antiretroviral therapy, typically administered in a "cocktail," mix of
several different products, prevents the deadly virus from replicating,
easing the disease's symptoms while prolonging lives.
While some health officials say it is too soon to launch sophisticated
treatment plans in Africa due to scarce health resources and other
constraints, Lewis called this line of thinking "a cruel and reckless
distortion of reality."
Nigeria is Africa's most populous country with a population of 114 million.
"Millions of lives can be saved and tremendous progress can be made with
what is now available," he said after touring AIDS programmes in Kenya,
Rwanda and Nigeria.
The Nigerian programme will begin by treating 10,000 adults and 5,000
children who either had AIDS or were infected with HIV, the virus that
causes the disease, Lewis said.
"The numbers will go up by the thousands over the next two years," he added.
President Olusegun Obasanjo was able to procure the drugs at a cut-rate $350
per person per year by sending Nigerian health officials to India to
negotiate directly with Bombay-based Cipla Ltd.
Cipla, which makes generic versions of high-priced patented medications
against AIDS, first attracted international attention in February with an
offer to export AIDS drugs for less than $1 a day.
To test the effectiveness of various regimens, Nigeria will start out
offering a six-pill-a-day regimen to 60 percent of patients and two pills a
day to the remaining 40 percent, measuring the impact of both regimens over
time, Lewis said.
The government will subsidize up to 80 percent of the cost, leaving patients
with a monthly bill of about $7 to $8.
Lewis said he asked many Nigerians if patients could afford that much and
"they all said they thought it was realistic."
The required laboratory work will all be done inside Nigeria, which has "a
tremendously sophisticated laboratory capacity," in both Abuja and Lagos, he
said. The Ford Foundation is underwriting the cost of the lab work.
The World Bank earlier this month approved a $90.3 million loan to support
Nigeria's Emergency Action Plan against AIDS over the next three years,
aimed at improving prevention efforts and patient care as well as treatment
services.
Copyright � 2001 The Guardian. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media
(allAfrica.com).
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