UN plan would rush Aids therapy to world's poor

1.01pm

NAIROBI - The United Nations unveiled plans today to rush life-saving anti-retroviral Aids drugs to three million of the world's poor in a US$5.5 billion ($8.7) billion emergency strategy to fight a disease now killing 8,000 a day.

"The lives of millions of people are at stake. This strategy demands massive and unconventional efforts to make sure they stay alive," World Health Organisation (WHO) Director-General Lee Jong-wook said in a statement to mark World Aids Day, Monday, December 1.

"Preventing and treating Aids may be the toughest health assignment the world has faced, but it is also the most urgent."

The world body announced last week that 40 million people around the world are infected with HIV, and that the global Aids epidemic shows no signs of abating.

The UN's WHO estimates that six million people in poor countries are in immediate need of the anti-retroviral (ARV) treatment that many rich world sufferers now take for granted, but less than 300,000 actually receive it.

The strategy requires getting ARV treatment to half of the six million by the end of 2005.

The WHO, whose recommendations guide policymakers around the world, is expected at the global launch of the strategy in Kenya to provide details of how to widen access to "combination therapy", which improves the effectiveness of treatment.

"The aim is to ensure that all people living with Aids, even in the poorest settings, have access to treatment through this simplified approach," a WHO statement said.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan thinks many political leaders still simply do not care enough to fight the disease, which has killed 28 million people since it was first reported among homosexual men in the United States in 1981.

Experts said a pillar of the plan will be a vast increase in the manufacture and distribution of combination therapy ARVs under which sufferers need only take two pills a day.

It is a simpler treatment regime than standard rich world programmes which require eight or more pills a day, and means compliance by patients in poor countries should be good.

The distribution of combination therapy has implications for the pharmaceutical business: multinational firms have often been prevented by patent restrictions from producing combination pills, a worry not shared by generic drugs manufacturers.

The WHO strategy focuses on five themes, assigning governments much of the work on the ground.

-- Distributing simplified, standardised tools to deliver anti-retroviral therapy

-- A new service operated by WHO and UNAids to ensure an effective, reliable supply of medicines and diagnostics

-- Rapid identification, dissemination and application of new knowledge and successful strategies

-- Urgent, sustained support for affected countries

-- Global leadership, strong partnership and advocacy

A key body will be a proposed global Aids Medicines and Diagnostics Service to ensure poor countries have access to quality medicines and diagnostic tools at the best prices.

The WHO is calling for money from donor governments and funding agencies.

"We know what to do but what we urgently need now are the resources to do it," said Lee. "We must waste no time."

Five million people became infected with HIV worldwide and three million died this year alone -- 8,000 people every day.

The WHO also wants to train more health workers because many of the worst-hit countries have very few trained health staff.

- REUTERS