Diary of the AIDS 2012 Conference
Sunday 22 July 2012
So the conference has not
officially started but sessions were running anyway. Big pharma and a couple of
generic and diagnostic producing companies have already sat up their impressive
booths in the commercial exhibition centre. Few countries have also done so, notably
the US, Germany and the Netherlands. Most NGOs have sat up their interesting
booths in the Global Village. Last night it was great to meet old comrades and
talk about the latest advocacy plans while they were setting up their tables
and flyers. Global village is fun!
First session I attended was about
Research and Development (R&D) for medicines: the new WHO report
recommending global actions. Clearly the current system of R&D based on Intellectual
Property (IP) has failed people in developing countries. Relying on the market
to decide R&D priorities means production of medicines that would make high
profits. Poor people cannot pay high price and therefore medicines for diseases
like sleeping sickness or children HIV are not produced. Suffice to say that
the latest diagnostics for TB is 100 years old and the latest medicine is 30
years old!
The WHO report recommends that
countries allocate a small % of their GDP for R&D and that part of this money
is pooled to pay for R&D for priority diseases. Priorities are set
collectively by a coordinating body-the WHO.
Neither rich nations nor pharmaceutical
companies are supportive of this model. Perhaps every new idea that commits governments
to payment or challenge companies on their “normal” business are not popular.
But we have an opportunity to learn
from the tobacco convention and other global initiatives so that the world can
collaborate to invest in R&D for diseases that disproportionately affect developing
countries. Time to act is now!
The world bank president at AIDS 2012
At the official opening of the AIDS
2012 conference, Jim Kim was the first World Bank president to address an AIDS
conference. This is very significant. Given Jim Kim’s background in health and
HIV, some were saying that he would not focus on health issues. Therefore it is
heartening to see that he still recognises that health (including fighting HIV)
is at the heart of poverty reduction and inclusive growth.
In 2005 when Jim Kim was at WHO, he
engineered the –then-controversial strategy of treating 3 million people by
2005. Today 8 million people are on treatment. He sees a lot of lessons to be
learnt from the response to HIV which can be implemented in education, maternal
health and in poverty reduction strategies. He praised HIV advocates who
campaigned for access to treatment and got the world to “turn the tide” of AIDS
since the epidemic started.
I was pleased to hear him committing
the World Bank to work on AIDS and to focus on what it does best: building
sustainable health systems.
Jim Kim also talked about the importance
of social protection because 150 million people fall into poverty/year due to
cost of health care. Yet the bank would do a great job stopping these people
falling into poverty by supporting countries to provide free public health care
services and encouraging other donors to support similar programmes.
Well, if the Global Fund and PEPFAR
are enabled to invest in HIV prevention, treatment and care, pharma joins the
patent pool and thus generic companies can produce affordable new medicines,
and the World Bank scales up investment in sustainable free public health
services, then we really can end AIDS!
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