20th July, 2010
Leaders and activists demand increased funding to ensure universal HIV treatment
The 18th International AIDS Conference opened in Vienna with a strong message to governments and donors to meet their funding obligations for treatment, care and support of people living with HIV and to ensure universal treatment.
Delegates from more than 185 countries are meeting at the magnificent Reid Messe Wien in the Austrian City from July 18-24, taking part in a wide range of activities including plenary sessions, workshops and satellite discussions, cultural activities in the colourful Global village, technical poster presentations and hundreds of exhibition stands where organisations and institutions are showcasing their work in HIV.
The opening session of the conference was a lively mix of beautiful music by the Vienna Orchestra, passionate official speeches, and noisy demonstrations for more HIV funding and recognition of human rights for marginalised groups. ‘No Retreat, Fund AIDS’, declared one huge banner that found its way to the main stage in between speakers. ‘Broken Promises Kill’, read dozens of posters held up by delegates in the massive hall. ‘Sex work is work!’ shouted a group of sex workers under scarlet umbrellas.
In his address UN Secretary-General Ban ki Moon noted that, although there has been significant progress in global HIV interventions, with a decline in new infections and more people on antiretroviral therapy (ART), there is a big threat to these advancements because some governments are cutting back on funding. “Recent gains must not be reversed,” he said, emphasising the importance of all governments to ensure that there was enough funding to maintain the momentum.
Ki Moon noted that increased funding for HIV interventions had been proven to be directly related to maternal health. One of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), he pointed out, was to reduce maternal deaths, but this could not be achieved if mothers kept dying from HIV because they could not access treatment or accessed it too late.
The theme of the conference is ‘Rights Here, Right Now’, which the UN Secretary General said was a call to the world to recognise and honour the human rights of people living with HIV, and especially those most marginalised and stigmatised, by ensuring that they have access to the prevention, treatment, care and support that they need to survive.
Conference Chair Julio Montaner expressed profound disappointment with the recent G8 and G20 meetings for their failure to take full responsibility meeting the pledge to provide universal treatment for HIV, and for being silent on a roadmap to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Said Montaner: “These countries could afford to pump millions of dollars into averting the financial crisis last year, but they choose to ignore a global health crisis such as this. Without universal access to treatment for HIV, we will not meet the MDGS by 2015. They must act, and they must act now.”
Montaner emphasised the direct co-relation between treatment and prevention. “ART is not just about treatment. It is also an integral part of prevention. There is evidence to show that there is a 90 per cent reduction of HIV transmission when an infected person is treated. Prevention is treatment; they are one thing, and they are the way forward.”
AMREF Director General Dr Teguest Guerma warns that the shortage of funding will have a profound negative effect in sub-Saharan Africa. “Because the G8 and other donors are not honouring their commitment to ensure universal access to HIV treatment, people are going to die. Without enough treatment, we will go back to the 1990s, when people in the North were getting treatment and those in the South were not.”
Treatment, said Dr Guerma, is an integral part of prevention. If we want to stop new infections, we must treat those who are infected. But there aren’t enough drugs; only 3 million people in Africa are currently on ART. This number is less than 40 per cent of those who need the antiretroviral. She added: “We would like to stop infection of newborns in a few years’ time, but this will not be possible if there is no treatment for pregnant women. I hope that some of the US$5 billion approved for maternal health by the G8 will go into prevention of mother to child transmission of HIV.”
AIDS Conference Co-chair Brigitte Schmied said shorting of funding forced health service providers to make agonising decisions of who lived and who didn’t because they could not meet the needs of all those who required treatment. “We must not let that happen,” she said, adding: “AIDS is not just about science. It is also about social justice. We must ensure that the human rights of people living with HIV and those who are most vulnerable yet marginalised to infection are met.”
The conference chairs urged delegates to sign the Vienna Declaration, a scientific statement seeking to improve community health and safety by calling for “the incorporation of scientific evidence into illicit drug policies.”
The statement declares that stigma towards people who use illicit drugs reinforces the political popularity of criminalising drug users and undermines HIV prevention and other health promotion efforts. “The criminalisation of illicit drug users is fuelling the HIV epidemic and has resulted in overwhelmingly negative health and social consequences. We are inviting scientists, health practitioners and the public to endorse this document in order to bring these issues to the attention of governments and international agencies, and to illustrate that drug policy reform is a matter of urgent international significance.”
Dr Guerma acknowledges that the stigma and discrimination are a major issue in Africa, particularly with regard to men who have sex with men and intravenous drug users, as these practices are both taboo and illegal. “To date 95 per cent of HIV infections in Africa are transmitted through sex, but they are increasingly being transmitted through intravenous drug use. Drugs like heroin used to be inhaled, but now they are being injected. Africa has also become a passage for drugs to and from Europe and North America. AMREF has experience in working with communities - be they of interest or practice - particularly those who are vulnerable and marginalised, and we are actively exploring ways of working with these groups because we realise that they are an increasingly important constituency in health interventions in Africa.”
