21369: Feldman: [procaare] Haiti's HIV Rate Cut by 50% since 1993 (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Janet Feldman <kaippg@earthlink.net>

Hello Dear Folks,
And more good news about HIV/AIDS in Haiti, very welcome indeed, even with
the severe lack of treatment access and availability for this and other
health problems. Here's hoping the future will be brighter on this and all
fronts, and thanks to all those helping to make it so. With very best
wishes, Janet (Feldman, kaippg@earthlink.net)

AIDS fighters hear good news from Haiti:
Innovative treatment and prevention programs have cut Haiti's HIV rate by
50 percent since 1993

Miami Herald - Monday, March 29, 2004
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."

Copyright (c) 2004 - Miami Herald. All rights reserved.

Source: AEGiS [29/3/04]
http://www.aegis.org/news/mh/2004/MH040310.html