E-drug: WHO Chief Attacks South Africa's HIV/AIDS Policy
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From UN Wire
Wednesday, August 6, 2003
WHO Chief Attacks South Africa's HIV/AIDS Policy
World Health Organization Director General Lee Jong-wook yesterday
reproached South Africa's policy of omitting HIV/AIDS drugs from the
national treatment program in an interview with
<http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20030805/hl_afp/health_who_aids_finland_030805160617>Agence
France-Presse.
The new WHO leader compared the HIV/AIDS crisis to "Armageddon" and
called it "a global security issue," speaking while a national AIDS
conference was occurring in Durban.
"You have to provide treatment as well as prevention," he said,
adding that the WHO would step up its battle against the disease.
"We have to make drugs, real drugs, available to people in the needy
countries," he said.
"We have to count on the research-based pharmaceutical industry to
develop new antiretroviral drugs. So we have to really encourage
them to continuously develop new medicines, and at the same time
vaccines," he said (AFP/Yahoo!News, August 5).
The government has barred public prescription of Nevirapine, a drug
that could stop HIV-positive mothers from passing the disease to
their children.
Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane, head of South Africa's Anglican
Church, also offered sharp criticism of the government's refusal to
endorse antiretroviral drugs while speaking in Cape Town yesterday.
He argued the government has committed a "world disgrace as serious
as apartheid" in focusing on "traditional medicine" rather than
treatment (London Telegraph, August 6).
Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang defended her government's
policies at an anti-smoking conference in Iceland,
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3126159.stm>BBC reported
yesterday. "On Aug. 31, I am launching a national institute for
traditional medicine because I think there is scope for it,"
Tshabalala-Msimang said (BBC Online, August 5).
Meanwhile, a Washington scientist who traveled to the HIV/AIDS
conference lost years of HIV/AIDS research when his laptop computer
was stolen Sunday in Durban.
"I wanted to tell the conference that I think we understand how this
disease happens and we could have an exciting opportunity to create a
vaccine," he said. "It was cutting-edge material that I wanted to
release at the conference this morning, but obviously I couldn't do
this," George Washington University professor James Mullins added
(<http://www.washtimes.com/world/20030805-093051-4212r.htm>AFP/Washington
Times, August 6).
Dr. Leela McCullough
Director of Information Services
SATELLIFE
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