Political shadow over AIDS meet

By G.Pramod Kumar

DURBAN, JULY 9. Vocal demands for equal access to treatment from activists, doctors and hundreds of people affected by HIV/AIDS has set the stage for the 13th International AIDS Conference which opens here tonight.

Hundreds of people joined a march by Treatment Action Campaign, an umbrella of about 300 organisations from 35 countries, from the City Hall to the Kingsmead Cricket Stadium, where the South African President, Mr. Thabo Mbeki, is scheduled to inaugurate the conference later tonight. They demanded access to treatment, which is prohibitively expensive even by western standards.

The thought-provoking march, which the organisers earlier apprehended could turn violent, is just a visible part of the theme of the conference: ``break the silence''. The theme refers to the urgent need to ``break the silence'' on issues such as equal access to treatment and care, prevention, governmental and private sector support in terms of providing education and resources, human rights, access to information and a supportive environment for People Living with HIV/AIDS (PWA) in society.

The event, as admitted by its Chairperson, Prof. Hoosen Coovadia, is the most politicised among all the AIDS conferences since 1985. Interestingly, Mr. Mbeki, who touched off a political firestorm in March, when he sought advice from two American scientists for supporting his argument that AIDS was not caused by HIV, himself was the cause of the politicisation.

He even wrote a letter to the U.S. President, Mr. Bill Clinton, saying that his country had to chart its own plan in dealing with the disease. Last year, he had questioned the safety of the standard anti-AIDS drug, AZT, and his Government declined to distribute it to pregnant women for reducing the chances of mother-to-child transmission of HIV.

Besides highlighting the peril faced by the developing world, as it houses nearly 90 per cent of the world's HIV infected people, the selection of Durban as the conference venue attracts attention to South Africa as the country with the largest number of people living with HIV.

Out of the country's 38 million population, more than four million, equivalent to nearly 20 per cent of the adult population, are infected with the virus.

The province of Kwazulu-Natal, which houses Durban, has the highest rate of infection in South Africa. About 70 per cent of the total number of the infected people in the world are in Africa.

The conference has been termed as one of the largest medical events in the world. More than 10,000 delegates from 178 countries have converged in this picturesque resort city to discuss the entire gamut of issues related to HIV/AIDS. The

six-day conference boasts of a diverse and comprehensive programme which includes four plenary sessions, 794 oral abstract sessions, 16 community symposia, 4,300 poster sessions and a series of meetings. For the first time, the event also has a separate track for human rights.

``No country should fail for the lack of resources,'' said Mr. Peter Piot, Executive Director of UNAIDS, the joint United Nations programme for AIDS.

At a press conference, he called for an allocation of $ 3 billions for HIV care and prevention in Africa and urged the rich countries to write off their loans to Africa.

Since the conference in Geneva, some things have changed and the shifting of AIDS into the political arena was one of them, he said.

Two representatives of the PWA, one a South African black woman and the other a white, demanded delicensing of the manufacture of AIDS drugs and allowing parallel import of drugs. ``It is sinful and criminal,'' they said referring to denial of permission to sell generic drugs.

``The Durban conference is a unique opportunity to focus our energies and attention where the impact and effects of the epidemic are being felt most by individuals, families, communities and countries,'' Prof. Coovadia said.

Since 1985, the International AIDS Conference has taken place regularly to enable participants to take stock of the spread of HIV, evaluate progress made in the field of medical research, and investigate and resolve many related social issues. The last meeting was in Geneva.

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