Your daily Selection of IRIN Africa PlusNews reports, 11/27/2003

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CONTENT:

1 - GLOBAL: AIDS treatment must adapt to poor communities, says MSF

1 - GLOBAL: AIDS treatment must adapt to poor communities, says MSF

NAIROBI, 27 November (PLUSNEWS) - AIDS treatment procedures must be

demystified, simplified, and adapted to the needs of the world's poorest

communities in order to be effective, according to the NGO Medecins Sans

Frontieres (MSF).

" To scale up treatment on a large scale, we have to adapt treatment models

to real life, " Dr Morten Rostrup, President of MSF's International Council

told reporters in Nairobi. " Adaptation means fewer pills per day, fewer

lab tests and free treatment, dispensed in the communities where people,

live, that is at district facilities and at community health posts. "

Currently ARV treatment - consisting of two triple therapy pills per day -

costs about US $270 per person per year, which is way beyond the reach of

ordinary people.

MSF doctor, Earnest Nyamoto, said that for a long time, people had

believed that ARV treatment was " complex, sophisticated and too technical "

for poor and rural communities. Yet MSF is proving otherwise with its

treatment of 1,200 people in Kenya, including in Nairobi's slum areas. " It

can be done, we can get the patients on treatment, " he said.

But MSF stressed it was essential to provide the treatment free of cost.

" Our experience convinces us that treatment must be free for patients, "

MSF Head of Mission in Kenya, Jamet, told reporters. " If there

was a fee, many of those who desperately need these lifesaving drugs would

not be able to get them. "

In Kenya, where 2.5 million people are reckoned to be infected with the

virus, and between 250,000 and 500,000 urgently need treatment, only three

percent are receiving it. The rest will die within two years. A draft

national treatment plan released six weeks ago plans to treat only 6,000

patients.

This year saw the highest number of deaths from HIV/AIDS ever recorded

worldwide, with three million dying and five million becoming infected,

according to the UN.

A new UNAIDS/WHO report says surprisingly little is being done in

sub-Saharan Africa - where an estimated 26.6 million people are living

with HIV - to implement even the most basic, cost-effective HIV-prevention

efforts, outside of Senegal and Uganda.

[ENDS]

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