This paper by the Center for International Development (CID), uses sales data on HIV/AIDS drugs in a sample of 34 low and middle income countries between 1995 and 1999 to assess empirically the impact of patents on unsubsidized access to a new drug therapy. The main finding is that patent rights do have a negative effect on unsubsidized access to HIV/AIDS drugs. Between 1995 and 1999, switching all HIV/AIDS drugs from a patent regime to a no patent regime would have actually increased access to therapy at least by 30%.

Botswana plans to treble its distribution of condoms in a bid to curb the spread of AIDS in the country, which has one of the world's highest infection rates, the health minister said on Thursday. The aim of a new government drive is to hand out enough condoms so that most of the African country's 1.7 million people will not have to go more than a kilometer to get hold of one.

While the Treasury and Department of Health number-crunch to determine whether government can afford anti-retroviral (ARV) treatment in public health, a number of small ARV programmes are already up and running. Several others are in the pipeline, the most ambitious being the SA Medical Association pledge to raise R80-million to set up two ARV pilot projects in each province to treat 9 000 people.
Related Link:
* SA govt heeds calls for free anti-Aids drugs
http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?a=11&o=15219

AF-AIDS is a regional forum on HIV/AIDS in Africa, moderated by the Health & Development Networks Moderation Team (HDN, www.hdnet.org) with technical support from Health Systems Trust (HST) on behalf of the AF-AIDS Policy and Steering Committee (HST, HDN & SAfAIDS). To join, send a blank message to [email protected]

Zambia is slated to receive more than K 420.4 million for AIDS programmes from the Global Fund on HIV/AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis.

The Zambia Episcopal Conference (ZEC) has secured relief commodities from its cooperating partners amounting to $190,000, (about K5 billion) for distribution.

The Seattle-based Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has announced a $200 million grant to establish the Grand Challenges in Global Health initiative, a joint venture with the National Institutes of Health that will seek to identify critical scientific challenges in global health and increase research on diseases that cause millions of deaths in the developing world.

A British conservationist, fighting to save a rare breed of zebra from extinction, has stressed that its future is intertwined with Ethiopia’s food aid dependency. Dr Stuart Williams is battling to save an estimated 500 Grevy's zebras which live in the mountainous areas of southern Ethiopia.

As the food crisis tightens its grip in Malawi, Christian relief and development agency Tearfund reports a worrying increase in the number of children coming onto the street in the desperate search for food and money. Starvation looms for more than three million people in Malawi, almost a third of the population, as a result of the country’s worst food crisis for decades.

Although a humanitarian crisis had been mitigated in Southern Africa through swift food aid deliveries, a horrifying new disaster was looming in Southern Africa in the form of HIV/AIDS, James Morris, the UN Secretary-General's special envoy for humanitarian needs in Southern Africa warned on Wednesday.

President Bush in his State of the Union address proposed spending $15 billion over the next five years to fight HIV/AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean, a plan which includes $10 billion in new money, the Boston Globe reports. Aids activists remain sceptical.

US-based HIV/AIDS lobby group ACT UP has slammed President George W Bush for turning his back on the UN Global Fund for AIDS, TB and Malaria. ACT UP said in a statement they were “disappointed” that only a small sum each year would be sent to the fund.

The South African Department of Health issued public statements in May 2002, upgrading its HIV/Aids policy, and acknowledging the link between HIV and Aids. But the Department of Health has yet again taken a step back by inviting an Aids dissident to address departmental officials. Minister Tshabalala-Msimang is not, however, alone in playing down the magnitude of the HIV/Aids problem. It seems that the Afrikaans and the conservative English media also follow her lead in the limited coverage HIV/Aids receives.

US-based AIDS Healthcare Foundation is planning to file a complaint with the SA Competition Commission against pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline, in a bid to widen access to AIDS drugs. The attorney representing the foundation in SA, Musa Ntsibande of law firm Strauss Daly, said that the complaint would argue that Glaxo abused its dominant market position in contravention of the Competition Act, and was engaging in excessive pricing of its drugs to the detriment of the consumer.

Young people in Zimbabwe have a lack of knowledge about HIV/AIDS, says a recent research article. In a country where roughly one-third of adults have HIV, the National AIDS Council (NAC) estimates that more than 50 percent of all newly-reported HIV infections are among people under age 18. Yet the country's young people are generally unaware of the risks of infection.

Today, in most African countries, only limited public health expenditures reach the poor. Decreasing social and health budgets, often inadequate and poor quality health services, as well as cultural problems, are major constraints for many poor to gain access to health care services. The main objective of this program is to increase knowledge on the monitoring and evaluation aspects of health micro-insurance schemes in Africa.

About 2.7m Nigerians are reported to have tested positive and are living with HIV/AIDS, while 250,000 have died from full blown AIDS.

The Centre for the Right to Health (CRH) a non-governmental human rights organisation based in Lagos, has filed an action at the Lagos High Court on behalf of a woman living with HIV/AIDS . The 39-year-old woman was denied access to treatment solely due to her HIV/AIDS status by the General Hospital in Lagos sometimes in March 2002, when she visited the hospital for treatment of opportunistic infections.

The Namibian government is investigating incidents of looting of relief food in recent weeks. The Namibian newspaper has reported that large quantities of maize meal, cooking oil and other commodities meant for drought relief had been looted in the Kavango and Ohangwena Regions, in the north and north-western parts of the country.

Three NGOs working to stave off the southern African food crisis have received a $114m emergency aid grant from a US Agency. This is for International Development Catholic Relief Services, which has announced that the grant would be channeled through itself, CARE and World Vision, to provide emergency and supplementary food distributions. This includes agricultural support and development training in Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe.