TERRA.WIRE
Anti-AIDS alliance calls in Africa for free therapy
 DAKAR (AFP) Dec 18, 2004
 An alliance of health experts, institutions and worldwide non-governmental organisations this week called for free healthcare for AIDS as well as anti-retroviral drugs in Africa and other developing regions.

The movement has launched a campaign, dubbed "Free by 5", at the intiative of Bernard Taverne, a doctor at the Development Research Institute in Senegal's capital Dakar, who told AFP that paying for care "seems to us to be the main obstacle to treatment and good quality care."

More than 600 people, including the director general of the international Mededins sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders), Gorik Ooms, and Helene Rossert, vice-president of the Global Fund to Fight Aids, have signed a "Free by 5" declaration issued on Tuesday.

Taverne said that this name "is a twist on the (UN) World Health Organisation's three by 5" goal of seeing anti-retrovirals (ARVS) made easily available to three million people in the developing countries by the end of

"We're not as naive as to believe that by making it free, we'll have ... three million people getting treatment, since there's a whole series of obstacles and the first is that you have to pay to consult and undergo tests for AIDS," Taverne said.

Testing and hospital treatment should be free like the drugs, "because it's a complete set. If a bit doesn't work, the whole thing falls apart."

"While the market price of drugs is coming down, many AIDS patients in developing countries die because they cannot afford their contribution to the cost of treatment," the "Free by Five" statement said.

Stephen Lewis, UN special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa and a signatory of the declaration, said that 'for many, this treatment (with ARVs) is literally the difference between life and death. But if the drugs are not offered free, the poorest people won't benefit."

Of 5.5 million HIV-positive people worldwide in need of treatment, according to the campaign, only about 440,000 have access to it. In Africa, no more than four percent of those living with HIV-AIDS are getting ARV treatment, the statement said.

Africa, which is home to almost two-thirds of the world's HIV and full-blown AIDS sufferers, as well as 76 percent of women living with the virus, still pays the highest price to the disease, according to the UN AIDS organisation's 2004 report.

In 2004, 3.1 million Africans contracted the infection and 2.3 million died of AIDS, the United Nations reported.