E-drug: WHO to take over the fight against aids
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Dear all,
As you probably know, the World Health Organisation is currently
taking central stage among the international bodies involved in the
fight against aids, and is also in the process of re-organising its
activities.
Several of the people who had been working on access to treatment
at UNAIDS have joined the WHO in the past months. At the same
time, the WHO is recruiting to fill up positions in its new HIV/AIDS
department. So far the WHO has not opted to release any official
information about the new organisation of its HIV/AIDS activities.
Unsurprisingly, rumours about this new HIV/AIDS department are
circulating within multi- and bi-lateral institutions as well as the NGO
sector. In the context of the WHO's track record concerning
HIV/AIDS, of ambiguity vis-�-vis HIV treatment access (to the
exception of a very few employees) and playing a role of hindrance
the past 5 years, there is obviously a lot to raise concern. Indeed,
the rumours - which WHO officers are declining to resolve - highlight
that recruitments for the new HIV/AIDS department concern people
with little aids or treatment access expertise and without experience
of developing countries.
If the few treatment access activities at UNAIDS are to stop due to
poached personnel while at WHO the new managing officers of the
HIV/AIDS department prove unable or unwilling to demonstrate pro-
active momentum and to implement concrete measures fast, we all
know this will probably translate into very heavy human
consequences in the field. It has now been established by the
medical and scientific community that HIV treatment is feasible in
developing countries - the International Conference on Aids and
STD's in Africa of last month offered a final confirmation of it. In this
context WHO must play a leading role in advocacy and technical
support to help developing countries implement HIV treatment
programmes as fast as possible. This in turn requires at first that
the WHO and the persons in charge of HIV/AIDS there present
precise and transparent objectives/strategies, and secondly that
they assure themselves of the collaboration of sufficient and
competent co-workers.
That is why it seems indispensable to obtain clarifications now from
the persons in charge who are taking those determining decisions,
as the WHO's annual Executive Board is about to take place next
week. The coordinator of WHO's upcoming new HIV/AIDS
department, Bernard Schwar Tlander, is now in office (+41 22 791
4705) and his assistant's name is Perine Bell (+41 22 791
3580). We are making enquiries on our end : if others succeed in
obtaining information, thank you for circulating it. We will of course
circulate what we learn.
Best regards,
Gaelle Krikorian
ACT UP-Paris http://www.actupp.org +33 1 4929 4475
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