E-drug: Guatemalan Congress Approves New AIDS Law
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For Immediate Release...
Guatemala City...5 May, 2000
Guatemalan Congress Approves New AIDS Law
By Richard Stern
The Guatemalan National Assembly has approved a new law which guarantees
the basic rights of People Living with AIDS. The law passed unanimously
May 3rd, and includes a provision guaranteeing Guatemalans Living with
AIDS the right to adequate medical treatment "including access to
Anti-Retroviral medications."
At present, only 15 percent of approximately 3,000 Guatemalans living with
AIDS have access to these medications. The law would create a legal avenue
for the 85 percent or nearly 2500 who do not to file a legal case against
the government if it fails to act to enforce the law, and provide them with
the medications they need.
The law also includes provisions prohibiting discrimination against People
with AIDS and establishing improved programs aimed at prevention.
Firings, harassment, rejection and other forms of discrimination are common
in Guatemala when a person's HIV status is discovered. Most cases of
discrimination are never reported.
An initial budget of about $700,000 annually has been assigned for
promotion of some programs mentioned in the law. This amount, however, would
not even begin to resolve the problem of access to anti-retroviral
medications, the cost of which would run around $18,000,000 annually, based
on current market prices of these medications.
Quoted in one of the country's major newspapers, "La Prensa Libre,"
Erickson Chiclayo, Executive Director of the HIV support known as Gente
Positiva (Positive People), called the law's approval "a great advance for
the health of Guatemalans who live with AIDS," a sentiment echoed by Olaf
Valverde of the Guatemalan branch of the International Health Advocacy group
Doctors Without Borders. Doctors Without Borders is in process of
organizing a campaign aimed at increasing access to AIDS medications
throughout Central America.
Guatemalan becomes the fourth Central American country to have approved such
a law, joining Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. But access to necessary
medical care remains beyond the reach of most People with AIDS in Honduras,
and Nicaragua. "The law says we have rights," say Sergio Navas, a
Nicaraguan AIDS activist, "but the government is not doing anything to help
us." No anti-retroviral medications are provided in Nicaragua.
(For more information about AIDS in Central America, please contact the
author at rastern@sol.racsa.co.cr)
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