E-drug: HIV treatment: the World Bank won't pay
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Act Up-Paris - Press Release
09/21/00
HIV treatment : the World Bank won't pay
The Bank announces illimited funds for the fight against AIDS but
refuses to finance access to HIV treatment.
The World Bank has recently announced the creation of a $500 million
fund for emergency loans devoted to the fight against aids. This
initial fund is in theory supposed to be "illimited" and would allow
the World Bank to definitively affirm its leadership in the fight
against the epidemic.
Its vice-president for Africa, Mr Madavo, has said his mea culpa:
"Quite frankly we didn't appreciate the seriousness and the
devastation that was being brought to bear by this epidemic". Indeed
there is no dearth of examples, and Mr Madavo will refer to the very
recent development plan for Ethiopia, which fails to even mention the
subject of aids. Ethiopia - where 500 die from aids every day - is
thus scheduled to receive 60 of the above-mentioned 500 million
dollars.
But the hecatomb in Ethiopia as in the rest of Africa is a disaster
forecast by the very policy which the World Bank intends to pursue
with this fund: on December 12, the Bank reported to the Wall Street
Journal that it would not engage in financing of antiretroviral
treatments. The institution deems the only treatments that can allow
survival with the virus too complicated and too expensive to be used
on a wide scale. It reported that it will only set to help African
governments strengthen the infrastructure necessary for their use
once prices have come down.
How can such things still be said ? At a time when HIV treatment
programmes are multiplying and confronted with tremendous obstacles
to growth, at a time when more and more countries are trying every
way of developing access to cheaper "generic" alternatives to the
brand-name drugs and when they bear the brunt of intimidation and
blackmailing by multinational drugmakers, the World Bank is taking
the wrong side and condemning millions to die without treatment.
Obviously, Mr Madavo still does not " appreciate the seriousness and
the devastation that was being brought to bear by this epidemic", and
his institution is sadly and paradoxically proving remarkably
consistent in this. Yet Mr Madavo was a participant to the recent
Durban conference on AIDS. He therefore has understood, as it was
demonstrated by UNAIDS there, that only generic competition can
bring down prices.
He should know that only scale economies, ie mass production, can
bring prices down further.
He should be able to see that by helping countries set up antiviral
access programmes, by helping countries pass legislation to legally
access the cheapest drugs, and by helping them manufacture these
drugs themselves, the World Bank could really contribute to saving
Africa from the hecatomb the institution has until now only furthered.
The future feasibility of wide treatment access depends on what
happens now, on the financial and technical support given to national
antiretroviral access initiatives.
By dangling this "illimited fund" prospect before countries' eyes,
the World Bank is trying to exonerate itself from 15 years of
iniquitous policies toward the developing world. But in spite of its
vague attempts at proper awareness, it continues to deny the obvious
and essential : in order to fight aids, the sick must be treated.
Yet today as the day before, the World Bank does not care for the sick.
Contact Julien Devemy - 33 1 49 29 44 75
Marie de Cenival
Vice-Presidente
Commission Nord/Sud
Act Up-Paris
Tel : 04 95 08 29 94
"Planet Africa" <planetafrica@asso.globenet.org>
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