wfn.org | All Africa News Agency - Bulletin No. 34-02 (b)

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AANA Bulletin						Bulletin APTA
Acting Editor - Mitch Odero				Acting Editor - Silvie Alemba

Govt Facilitates Affordable Drugs For AIDS Victims

NAIROBI (AANA)  September 2 - Sufferers of the dreaded HIV/AIDS in Kenya 
could soon easily be able to buy anti-retroviral generic drugs at an 
affordable price, thanks to the government offer of a special licence to 
import  the medicines.

The move is expected to reduce the costs of the drugs by half  in a country 
which according to a UNAIDS report last month has the third highest number 
of AIDS orphans - an estimated 890,000 such orphans.

Two such consignments of generic drugs have in the past month been brought 
into the country and the drugs are expected through non-profit central 
suppliers to be taken to mission hospitals in the country.

This means that  only about 40 percent of the country's  health 
institutions treating victims of the pandemic will benefit through the 
special importation licence.

A report  by the Kenya Coalition for Access to Essential Medicines KCAEM 
said it is expected that the drugs now in the country could reduce the 
price formerly paid by victims of the HIV/AIDS.

An official of the Coalition  Liza Kimbo says that the price of the 
required triple therapies for an AIDS sufferer could be reduced to the half 
price of KShs 3,000 ( about KShs 78 to the US dollar) down from the 
previous price of KShs 6,000.  By early last year some of the drugs used by 
the victims of the disease were costing up to KShs 10,000 per month.

Many Kenyans recall spending huge amounts of money to buy AIDS medicines in 
the past five years. One such Kenyan, Ms Susan Mwangi, whose aunt finally 
succumbed to the pandemic last year recalls that she used to spend KShs 
15,000 on 60 tablets of combivir and 15 of viramune 200mg apart from other 
drugs every month as part of treatment .

"We reached a stage where we in the family could not afford buying the 
drugs anymore at such a high price while at the same time despite using the 
drugs she continued getting weaker and weaker. She eventually in June last 
year succumbed to the HIV/AIDS,''  Susan recalls.

The KCAEM official said that the latest move was an indicator that issuance 
of the special import licence could bring easy access to cheaper 
anti-retroviral generic drugs and that Kenya  should be looking for a 
permanent solution to benefit her citizens.

She added that  it was estimated by her coalition, which stocks the AIDS 
drugs, that the current shipment of the drug was enough for three months' 
treatment of about 600 patients in the mission hospitals.

The Nyumbani Home for AIDS Orphans Nairobi, and the Nazareth Hospital in 
Kiambu, just outside Nairobi, are beneficiaries of the drugs consignment.

In the past 2,400 tablets and 103 bottles of Nevirapine  have been given to 
different institutions and mission hospitals.

Last month's UNAIDS  report stated that a total of 2.5 million Kenyans, 
which is about 15 percent of the country's  adult population are living 
with HIV. The report said it is the high number of AIDS orphans in Kenya 
that is potentially the biggest long term crisis.

The report said this was most perplexing considering the vast amounts of 
money pumped into scores of anti-aids non-governmental Organisations (NGOs) 
in Kenya  over the past 20 years.

Notably several NGOs have sprung up in Kenya in the last 20 years all 
campaigning against the HIV/AIDS.

Most of them have come under criticism from different individuals and the 
government as their missions seem to become a growth industry.

The Kenya government has already declared the pandemic a national disaster 
and set up structures and organisations to deal with the scourge.

Last January Kenya's Public Health Minister Sam Ongeri said Kenya was 
seeking a KShs 39 loan to cover the cost of giving free anti-retroviral 
drugs to people with AIDS.

The country needs between US $500 million (KShs 39 billion ) annualy to 
provide free AIDS drugs to 700,000 people carrying the killer virus.

Although according to the Ministry part of the money would go into setting 
up laboratories  to monitor AIDS treatment and train health workers 
involved in fighting the pandemic the programme is yet to be implemented.

In the meantime the government has launched a programme for free 
anti-retroviral to prevent HIV
transmission from mother to child. In the initial stage more than 7,000 
Nevirapine drugs will be used.

At the International AIDS Conference held in Barcelona, Spain, in July 
drugs firms unveiled more progress in developing innovative AIDS therapies, 
highlighting a gulf in care between the rich and the poor.

Most of the sophisticated new treatments would be priced out of the reach 
of developing countries, where 95 percent of those infected by AIDS live.

According to the reports  from the conference, a stream of new 
anti-retroviral drugs in recent years meant that AIDS was no longer an 
automatic death sentence.

But AIDS continues to claim millions of lives in poor countries where 
expensive combination therapy in available to only a few.

Report by Andrew Kuria in Nairobi

FOCUS ON EARTH SUMMIT

Delegates Urged To Act On Environmental Problems

JOHANNESBURG (AANA) September 2 - African delegates attending the World 
Summit on Sustainable Development here have been presented with an agenda: 
Begin taking action now to ensure that environmental problems and social 
unrest do not undermine the growth needed to reduce poverty in Africa.

"Low income countries will need to grow at 3.6 percent per capita to meet 
the United Nations' Millennium Development Goal of halving poverty by 2015. 
This growth must be achieved in a manner that preserves our future," said 
Ian Johnson, Vice President of the World Bank's Environmentally and 
Socially Sustainable Development Network.

He issued the statement last week ahead of the launch of the World 
Development Report 2003: Sustainable Development in a Dynamic World. He 
said there is a need for immediate action especially in the five areas that 
are the focus of the Johannesburg Summit: water, education, health, 
agriculture, and biodiversity.

The report notes that with average 3.6 percent growth per year, the world 
would have a US $140 trillion economy by the middle of the century. Such 
growth can only be sustained if environmental and social stresses are 
adequately addressed, according to the report.

"The 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, highlighted the need for 
socially and environmentally sustainable approaches to development. 
However, despite increased attention and concern since then, many of 
the  problems identified in at the Earth Summit have yet to be adequately 
addressed," said the press statement.

The report said over the next 50 years, the world population will increase 
by three billion, to nine billion people. "The world must find better ways 
to enable poor people to manage their own resources and build their 
productivity and incomes," said Nicholas Stern, World Bank Chief Economist 
and Senior Vice President.

He said rich countries can take such a step by opening their markets to 
developing world exports, and by abandoning agricultural subsidies and 
other barriers to trade that depress prices and limit market opportunities 
for the very goods that poor people produce most competitively."

The report calls for new partnerships at the local, national, and 
international levels to address social and environmental strains. The 
report recognises the New Partnership for Africa's Development NEPAD as an 
important step towards building global partnerships for sustainable 
development.

"South Africa's transition from apartheid, and innovations such as the 
Truth and Reconciliation Councils, demonstrate the potential value of 
creating new institutions to avoid social upheaval," says the report.

The report says some examples of new institutions to address these problems 
include participatory budgeting and project design, international markets 
for trading carbon emissions rights, and certification processes for timber 
and diamond exports.

The World Bank urges governments in Africa and the rest of the developing 
world to become more accountable and transparent, and ensure that 
poor  people have access to education, health care, other basic services, 
and to secure land tenure.

The report says the very high share of people in Africa living on fragile 
lands means that Africans are especially vulnerable to climate changes 
due  to global warming.

Africa's per capita output of carbon dioxide, one of the main greenhouse 
gasses, is however less than any other region.

Africa also has the fastest growing cities in the world, with urban 
population growth rates of about 5 percent per year, compared to about 3.5 
per cent in other parts of the developing world.

Linda Likar, a World Bank lead economist and member of the team that 
produced the report, said that African solutions such as traditional and 
indigenous approaches to land use have not been fully tapped because more 
"modern" approaches developed in other contexts have been uncritically applied.

"Some traditional African approaches have proven to be sustainable over 
long periods. These deserve greater attention," she explained. The report 
reveals that by 2050, most people will live in cities for the first time in 
human history.

The report says better standards, increased efficiency, and new, more 
inclusive means of decision-making could mean that capital stock needed to 
reduce poverty- apartments, shops, factories, roads, power and sanitation 
systems - could be built in ways that puts fewer strains on society and the 
environment.

The report suggests that sustainable development will require: achieving 
substantial growth in income and productivity in developing countries, 
managing the social, economic and environmental transitions to a 
predominantly urban world and attending to the needs of hundreds of 
millions of people living on environmentally fragile lands.

"In the next 50 years, the world's population will begin to stabilize and 
the majority of people will live in cities for the first time in history," 
said Zmarak Shalizi, lead author of the report.

"By thinking long term and acting now, we can take advantage of these 
windows of opportunity to shift development to a more inclusive 
and  sustainable path, and achieve steep reductions in poverty in the 
decades ahead".

Prepared by Stephen Mbogo