'Nutrition key to Aids fight'
2008-08-04 13:32
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UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has warned governments against using the economic crisis as an excuse to cut funding for fighting Aids.
Todd Pitman
Dakar - Former President Clinton said on Sunday that keeping HIV-infected children in the developing world well-fed amid the pressures of skyrocketing global food and fuel prices will be crucial to fending off the deadly virus.
Speaking on the final day of a four-nation Africa tour that began last week, Clinton said he saw children in Ethiopia who "cannot live" because they were so malnourished they could not absorb lifesaving antiretroviral drugs.
"If you look at the rising price of petroleum, the rising price of food around the world, we are all going to have to re-examine how we produce food, where we produce it, how we consume it," Clinton said.
"It's not just a question of energy prices, it's not just a question of global warming. It's a question of how we are going to keep our kids alive," Clinton said.
Some 2.1 million people died of Aids last year and at least 33 million people worldwide have the HIV infection, two-thirds of them in Africa, according to the UN.
Clinton's foundation has negotiated agreements to lower the prices of rapid HIV tests and anti-Aids drugs in the developing world and has collaborated with the Geveva-based Unitaid, a UN-backed fund that helps supply low-cost antiretroviral drugs.
'We're still along way from universal coverage'
The drugs have made HIV a manageable illness for many patients and prolonged their lives beyond what once seemed possible.
Clinton said that when Unitaid was created in 2006, the cost of antiretrovirals was $600 - about a third the per capita income of Senegal and three times the per capita income of the poorest African nations. Today, the same drugs cost $60.
"The same people who sell them today at $60 did not all the sudden have a conversion where they said, 'I'm being greedy and now I'll be generous.' They charged that because they had a small volume with a lot of fixed costs," Clinton said.
"Now, because of the Unitaid funding, there is a big volume with absolutely certain payments," he said. "So they can charge a small profit margin on each individual lifesaving medication."
He cautioned, however, that "we're still along way from universal coverage".
Indeed, of the 22 million people in Africa infected with HIV, only about 2 million have access to antiretrovirals, the UN says.
About 30% of mothers who deliver children when they are HIV positive deliver children who are HIV positive, Clinton said.
Halting transmission from mother to child
But antiretroviral medicines, which inhibit replication of the HIV virus, can cut that number to 2% because they are 98% effective in halting transmission from mother to child.
Since 2006, the number of children in the developing world with access to antiretroviral treatments has increased from 10 000 to more than 200 000 today, Clinton said.
The former president began his tour of Africa last week with his daughter Chelsea and a delegation that includes television celebrity Ted Danson and his wife, actress Mary Nell Steenburgen.
The group travelled to Ethiopia, Rwanda and Liberia before a several-hour stop in Dakar on Sunday night to look at efforts of his foundation.
Clinton travels overnight to Mexico City to attend an international Aids conference that starts on Monday.
- AP