“Nobody says we shouldn’t treat TB or cancer because we don’t have the infrastructure or the ability to do so properly,” said Dr Andy Grey from the Health System Trust in Durban.
This was in response to Dr Mazuwa Banda from the World Health Organization, who argued at the AIDS 2000 conference that antiretroviral drugs should not be distributed in countries where “the basic requirements for [their] safe, effective use” are not in place.
Mark Heywood of the AIDS Law Project argued that despite being inadequate, the public and private health care infrastructure in South Africa is nevertheless already capable of administering antiretroviral drugs.
The notion that everyone in Africa has to walk 40 miles to their nearest clinic is “racist and misleading”, said Heywood. The problem is that the cost of these drugs makes it impossible for our clinics and hospitals to provide it.
“We are in Durban. Nearby there are 10 private sector hospitals and two public ones which can provide antiretroviral drugs. Yet 300 000 people here in the Durban metropolis with HIV have no access to drugs. .The problem is that the cost of medicine makes it impossible for our clinics and hospitals to provide it.”
The lack of infrastructure argument is nothing more than a decoy used to justify the government’s failure to allocate adequate resources to health and the failure of the pharmaceutical industries to lower their prices, concluded Heywood.
Pills are the bottom-line,” said Heywood. “Pills are what brought health back to people living with AIDS in America.” – Health-e News Service.
