'Can't beat Aids on drugs alone'
2005-06-24 10:54
Baltimore - Drugs alone will not help Africa beat Aids, one of the scientists who discovered the virus that causes the disease said on Thursday at an African business summit.
Robert Gallo said research — not just on the development of antiretroviral drugs to fight the disease or a vaccine to prevent it — but on their proper use among various populations, has been the "forgotten or unspoken word" in Aids policymaking.
Merely providing drugs to countries battling Aids "is not scientifically sound," Gallo said. "It's going to give rise to multi-drug resistant strains."
Gallo is the head of the Institute of Human Virology. The centre at the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute researches viruses that cause Aids and other diseases, and is a partner in President George W Bush's emergency plan for Aids relief in Africa, known as Pepfar.
He spoke at the United States (US)-Africa Business Summit being held by the Corporate Council on Africa, which represents 85% of US private investment on the continent. Six heads of state are among the more than 2 000 attending the four-day summit.
Encouraging the private sector to invest
Gallo called Aids the "greatest microbial threat in the history of mankind" and warned if the private sector does not "invest in the health of the African people now, there will be little to invest in."
Aids is the leading cause of death in Africa. Sub-Saharan Africa is the most seriously affected region in the world and is home to more than 60% of all people infected with the HIV virus that causes Aids. Last year, 2.3 million people in sub-Saharan Africa died of Aids, according to the Joint United Nations (UN) Programme on AIDS.
Gallo and Merck & Co Inc (MRK) vice-president Jeff Sturchio, whose company is testing a vaccine, said a vaccine is still years away.
Gallo also called on the Bush administration to use some of the money being spent on bio-terror preparedness to expand its Aids relief plan to US inner cities.The expansion would give researchers and medical professionals real-world experience in dealing with the virus, and "go a long way to preparing for any kind of microbe".
A sense of self-reliance
World Bank chief Paul Wolfowitz, who was to speak later on Thursday, said his recent African tour revealed a sense of self-reliance among those he visited on the troubled continent.
"This was true from presidents and ministers to impoverished village communities and poor farmers," Wolfowitz said in a statement released before he addressed the summit. "Everywhere, I found people who had a real willingness to work hard, intelligence, energy, and a can-do attitude. Africa is a continent on the move."
Wolfowitz, who had been the second-highest official at the Pentagon and a prime architect of the Iraq war, has said African development must be the bank's top priority.