Pandemic priority

As I sit at my computer trying to write this post I am overcome. I plan on discussing AIDS and the global action/inaction to respond to a pandemic. I stare at the poster of Stephen Lewis that is hung up before me and I turn to the opening line of his book Race Against Time, "I have spent the last four years watching people die."

HIV Statistics	Total	Adult	Children
People with HIV/AIDS in 2004	39.4 millions	37.2 millions	2.2 millions
Newly infected people with HIV in 2004	4.9 millions	4.3 millions	0.64 millions
AIDS deaths in 2004	3.1 millions	2.6 millions	0.51 millions

When someone first develops AIDS it feels like a flu. However, there is also swelling in the glands of your neck and armpits. If you go to get tested you might not even test positive because it takes a while for it to appear in the blood stream.

I wish to avoid describing how AIDS is transmitted and what the syptoms are so I will direct you here for more information. I wish to focus on the global (specifically the Canadian) response to AIDS.

San Francisco studies show that in developed countries, without use of the latest therapies:

• 50% with HIV develop AIDS in ten years
• 70% with HIV develop AIDS in fourteen years
• Of those with AIDS, 94% are dead in five years

Total number of AIDS deaths between 1981 and the end of 2003: 20 million.

Number of children orphaned by AIDS living in Sub-Saharan Africa at the end of 2003: 12 million.

AIDS affects the lives of millions and millions go without treatment (1 in 10 people who are infected do not receive treatment).

Why the injustice? Money (or a lack thereof).

Prices taken from the Medecins Sans Frontieres Website

Price of AZT/3TC (Combivir, a drug taken twice a day)

- GlaxoSmithKline (proprietary company), special discount price: US$ 2 per day
- FarManguinhos (generic): US$0.96 per day (52% cheaper)

Price of Nevirapine (a drug that when given to both mother and child reduced the rate of HIV transmission by almost 50%)

- Boehringer Ingelheim (proprietary company): US$1.19 per day (3)
- FarManguinhos (generic): US$0.59 per day (50% cheaper)

Price of AZT (The first anti-HIV drug approved for use in the United States)

- GlaxoSmithKline (proprietary company): US$1.6 per day
- FarManguinhos (generic): US$0.09 per day (94% cheaper)

Price of 3TC: (It mimics a nucleoside base, which blocks further construction of the virus.)

- GlaxoSmithKline (proprietary company): US$0.64 per day
- FarManguinhos (generic): US$0.41 per day (36% cheaper)

With prices so cheap it's a wonder why nothing has been done. Stephen Lewis told CTV Newsnet that Canada continually falls short in implementing existing legislation for providing generic drugs to African countries, passed nearly three years ago.

"Not a single tablet has gone out from that day to this," he said. Only one in 10 Africans infected with HIV receives treatment.

Why is so little being done? Why is Canada waiting so long to take action? Thousands die every day and they do not have to suffer as much as they do.

Action Items:
- Get involved with your local AIDS committee to spread awareness and education in your community
- Get tested if you think you are at risk
- Write to your member of Parliament or the Canadian International Development Agency and tell them you want them to do more. Or you can write to Bev Oda again.

"We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope."
- Martin Luther King Jr