A worker at the Laboratorio Cristalia man's the assembly line of anti-retroviral generic drugs used by AIDS patients at thefirm's factory in the town of Itapira, Brazil. In three decades, Laboratorio Cristalia has grown from a tiny company making one cloned anti-hyperactivity medication to a firm with 1,200 workers churning out 150 drugs. Now Cristalia and its competitors are trying to figure out how they can profit from the World Trade Organization's recent agreement allowing impoverished nations to bypass big pharmaceutical companies and import copied patented medicines needed to fight killer diseases.PHOTO TASR/AP
JOHANNESBURG AIDS has already orphaned more than 11 million children across Africa, and the worst is yet to come as more parents succumb to the epidemic, UNICEF said in a report. The report called for swift international aid to families and communities struggling to support AIDS orphans, calling it a „crisis of gargantuan proportions" with grave implications for African societies, as United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) Executive Director Carol Bellamy said. Sub-Saharan Africa is the region worst affected by the world HIV/AIDS epidemic, with an estimated 26.6 million people infected with the disease. The report said that by the end of 2001 more than 11 million African children under the age of 15 had been orphaned by AIDS, up from fewer than one million in 1990. In countries worst hit by the epidemic such as Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland, where HIV prevalence rates are higher than 30 percent, as well as in Zimbabwe, more than one in five children will be orphaned by 2010, 80 percent of them by AIDS.
UNICEF said that even in countries like Uganda which have succeeded in stabilising or lowering HIV/AIDS prevalence rates, the orphan crisis will grow as parents already infected by the disease continue to die. The report said that extended families were caring for 90 percent of Africa's AIDS orphans, putting increasing burdens on family networks -- more and more of which are headed by women and grandparents. Noting that many of the most severely affected countries in sub-Saharan Africa had no national policies to deal with the needs of orphaned children, the UNICEF report called for immediate assistance for programmes designed to support, educate and care for the very vulnerable population.
Aid agency urges expanded AIDS treatment
NAIROBI A leading medical aid agency said that AIDS treatment needed to be simplified and its reach extended or millions of sufferers in poor countries would be deprived of help they urgently needed. Morton Rostrup, President of the International Council of Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), called for anti-retroviral treatment for AIDS sufferers and those infected with the HIV virus that causes the disease to be expanded into remote, rural areas in poor countries.
In a news conference held before the World AIDS Day, Rostrup called for local clinics to dispense anti-retroviral treatments (ARVs), which can slow the onset of AIDS. He said ARV drugs should be free for AIDS sufferers and HIV-infected people. Treatment could be streamlined by prescribing patients one tablet a day instead of many drugs several times a day.
MSF estimate that worldwide three million people will die of AIDS this year, compared with 2.7 million last year. The HIV virus kills by breaking down the body's immune system, leaving it vulnerable to infections and disease. More than six million people urgently need ARV treatment, of which 4.1 million live in sub-Saharan Africa. Last year only a fraction 50,000 of African patients received treatment. Reuters
