20981: (Hermantin)Miami-Herald-AIDS fighters hear good news from Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Posted on Mon, Mar. 29, 2004


CONFERENCE IN MIAMI


AIDS fighters hear good news from Haiti

Innovative treatment and prevention programs have cut Haiti's HIV rate by 50
percent since 1993.

BY FRED TASKER

ftasker@herald.com


Despite the stealing of ambulances by thugs during the recent violence,
despite experts' saying AIDS cannot be fought effectively in poor, rural
settings, prominent AIDS fighters said Sunday there's good news from Haiti.

While AIDS still claims 30,000 lives a year in Haiti and has left 200,000
children orphaned, innovative treatment and prevention programs have cut
Haiti's HIV rate by 50 percent since 1993, Dr. Jean Pape, of the Cornell
Weill Medical College and director of Les Centres Gheskio in Haiti, told the
Naitonal HIV/AIDS Update Conference in Miami on Sunday.

A HUMAN RIGHT

Praising those efforts, pioneering Harvard University medical anthropologist
Dr. Paul Farmer, co-founder of Clinique Bon Sauveur in the rural village of
Thomonde, called for a worldwide shift looking at AIDS prevention and
treatment as a human right, not a tool delivered or withheld on the basis of
cost effectiveness.

Citing Universal Declaration of Human Rights' articles declaring the human
right to health, well-being and adequate medical care, Farmer criticized
articles in the medical journal Lancet and elsewhere arguing that prevention
is more cost-effective than treating infected patients with antiretroviral
drugs.

``We don't know how much it costs us as human beings not to have equity, to
have a situation in which some people have access to drugs and others do
not. Problems can be overcome. We know we're not going to meet the goal, but
it doesn't mean we should stop trying.''

With funding from the U.S. government and from the private group Project
MediShare, clinics in Haiti over the past 10 years have cut mother-to-infant
transmission of HIV from 22 percent to 4 percent, have increased HIV
screening seven-fold and brought condom use from almost nothing to 15
million in 2003, Pape said.

The symposium was sponsored by the Green Family Foundation Initiative in
Pediatric Infectious Disease & Immunology and international Health, which
has granted $2.5 million to the University of Miami Department of Pediatrics
and Project MediShare, a Miami-based clinic providing healthcare in rural
Thomonde, Haiti. The weekend conference is sponsored by the American
Foundation for AIDS Research.

A similar human rights approach in Brazil has cut AIDS deaths by 50 percent
to 90,000 a year since 1996, said Dr. Roberto Brant Campos, deputy director
HIV/AIDS programs in that country's Ministry of Health. Since 1988, the
Brazilian Constitution has declared healthcare to be every person's right
and the government's obligation, he said.

OUTREACH CAMPAIGNS

Brazil followed up with massive outreach campaigns to army inductees, sex
workers, drug users, prisoners -- even distributing free condoms to teens in
all public and private high schools, he said.

''I thought macho Latin American males would never use condoms,'' said Dr.
Fernando Zacarias, director of HIV/AIDS programs for the Pan American Health
Organization. But he said condom use increased from 4 percent of all males
having their first sex in 1986 to 48 percent in 1999.

Serious problems remain, especially in Haiti.

Farmer's clinic lost four ambulances to armed thugs during the recent
political upheavals.

''Our workers were scared,'' he said. ``But not a single worker failed to
show up at work, and not a single patient missed a dose of medicine. I give
them great credit for that.''

_________________________________________________________________
Get reliable access on MSN 9 Dial-up. 3 months for the price of 1!
(Limited-time offer)
http://join.msn.com/?page=dept/dialup&pgmarket=en-us&ST=1/go/onm00200361ave/direct/01/