EU accused of lacking commitment to Third World’s battle against AIDS

Date: 11/07/02

By David Cronin

THE European Commission has been accused of failing to show 'real commitment' towards combating AIDS in the world's poorest countries.

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), the humanitarian medical aid agency, said the executive was allocating insufficient resources to fight the spread of the disease at a time when 36 million people are waiting for treatment.

The protest came as 15,000 specialists gathered for this week's 14th international AIDS conference in Barcelona.

Seco Gerard, a campaigner based at MSF's international headquarters in Brussels, said that a Commission proposal to allocate €75 million to anti-AIDS initiatives next year was inadequate. 'This is certainly not showing what I would describe as a real commitment to tackle HIV and AIDS,' she added.

Of that sum, €35 million is earmarked for the Global Health Fund and €40 million to a 'programme for action' against killer diseases. The anti-poverty lobby regards the amounts involved as too low. Since its inception in 2001, the industrialised world has promised €2.1 billion to the Global Fund; United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has estimated €11.5 billion is needed each year to significantly reduce AIDS infection.

Data released this month by the World Health Organisation indicate that just 230,000 of the six million AIDS patients deemed ill enough to need antiretroviral (ARV) drugs in developing countries actually receive that treatment.

Michael Curtis, spokesman for EU Development Commissioner Poul Nielson, said those who think the €75 million identified by MSF represents the institution's total contribution to the fight against AIDS are 'gravely mistaken'.

In addition to that amount, the Commission is seeking the release of €35 million from the European Development Fund for projects to fight the disease. A further €90 million should be ploughed into work on sexual and reproductive health in poor countries.

Curtis added that the principle behind contributions to the Global Health Fund is that it should not be at the expense of other development schemes. Much of the €120 million allocated last year came from unspent money earmarked for fisheries.

Speaking in Barcelona yesterday (10 July), a senior EU development official, Lieve Fransen, said more work was needed to ensure that vital medicines are available at cheaper prices in the developing world than in the West.

According to Fransen, the debate on so-called 'tiered pricing' for key pharmaceutical products is 'becoming increasingly difficult and losing its momentum'.

She described as 'too legalistic' some of the discussions on patent rights for medicines in the World Trade Organisation and its council on intellectual property.

'The European Union is defending the public health approach in these fora, while recognising that affordable prices for key products such as ARV have to go hand-in-hand with the development of new reliable products,' she said.

• A new anti-AIDS drug has shown promising results in trials, the AIDS conference in Barcelona was told on Monday (8 July).

The synthetic drug, T-20 or Enfurvirtide, was found to significantly reduce levels of HIV, the AIDS virus, when combined with existing treatments.

T-20, which has undergone trials at hospitals in the EU, the Americas and Australia, works by blocking the 'fusion' of HIV with healthy cells and also increases the number of white blood cells.

The European Commission has been accused of failing to show 'real commitment' towards combating AIDS in the world's poorest countries.