Africa and fight against the AIDS scourge

With the theme ‘Ownership, Accountability, and Sustainability of HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria Response in Africa: Past, Present and the Future’, the Abuja+12 Summit was aimed at assessing the impact of the efforts so far in tackling the diseases and making farther commitments under the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of the United Nations. It was in […]

With the theme ‘Ownership, Accountability, and Sustainability of HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria Response in Africa: Past, Present and the Future’, the Abuja+12 Summit was aimed at assessing the impact of the efforts so far in tackling the diseases and making farther commitments under the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of the United Nations. It was in the summiteers’ assessment that the 2015 MDG target set for pushback against such diseases would not be met, but noted that any goal of attaining the milestone would have to aim beyond 2015.
In Nigeria, President Goodluck Jonathan told a related audience at an AIDS Watch Africa Champions breakfast meeting in Abuja at about the same time that the country’s response plan would be to test 80 million Nigerians of 15 years and above to know their HIV status in order to check the diseases’ spread in the country.
Dr Jonathan said that a Presidential Comprehensive Response Plan (PCRP) was being put together to enrol additional 600,000 eligible adults and children into the government’s anti-retroviral therapy programme and also make provision for 244,000 HIV-positive expectant mothers.
It also planned to provide access to prevention services for 500,000 most-at-risk populations and four million young persons and activate 2,000 new prevention of mother-to-child transmission, in addition to the 2,000 ART delivery points across the country, the president disclosed. Both the AU goals and Jonathan’s Nigeria-specific programme look attractive, but the key to their success depends on implementation. If past experience in Nigeria is any guide, success is far from being assured.
Across the country, and in many other African countries, the people who need the drugs don’t get them where they should, because those in custody of the drugs either sell them to commercial pharmacies, or charge exorbitant fees. The other challenge is the fatigue of donor agencies, who in the past have accused HIV/AIDS advocacy groups of profiteering. In one such case, a report was made public a couple of years showing that some government officials register advocacy groups in order to divert funds channelled through agencies for the fight against HIV/AIDS. Any effort aimed at checking the menace is welcome; its success would mean literally a lifeline for millions of people afflicted with these diseases. However, the president needs to shed more light on how 80 million people would be tested for their status, so that those in charge of the process are aware on how to proceed.
Seeking African solution to the menace, as the president advocated when he addressed the summit, is not a new objective.  The continent is home to millions of species of potentially potent response to this pandemic. What is required are not the annual jamborees that these summits have come to be identified with, but the serious political will governments on the continent to commit the financial resources needed to intensify research into finding a permanent cure for it.
While the multinational drug companies return billions of dollars in profits from the sale of such anti-retroviral drugs in Africa alone, any hope on their part to be involved in active search for a solution that would stem the flow of that huge cash haul would be forlorn one. So it would be futile to rely on the benevolence of such multinationals.
The AU should pool the resources of its member states and enunciate its own millennium goals targeted at these diseases with a given timeframe for getting results. India and Brazil took an early lead in undertaking research as fighting tools and came up with generic alternatives to the expensive anti-retroviral drugs of Western multinational pharmaceutical companies. The result has been a remarkable fall in prevalence in of HIV/AIDS and related diseases in both countries.
Universal coverage, in both testing the status and access to drugs, is advisable. These tests must be preceded by intensive campaigns against stigmatization. The panic that accompanies taking HIV-AIDS tests should be combated by emphasising messages that inspire confidence and mean it.