Your daily Selection of IRIN Africa PlusNews reports, 9/23/2004

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U N I T E D N A T I O N S

Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

Integrated Regional Information Network

[These reports do not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

CONTENT:

1 - COTE D IVOIRE: Private AIDS clinic brings hope to Abidjan slum

2 - KENYA: AIDS drugs to be manufactured within weeks

1 - COTE D IVOIRE: Private AIDS clinic brings hope to Abidjan slum

ABIDJAN, 23 September (PLUSNEWS) - For Swiss-born Lotti Latrous, founder

of a private AIDS clinic in the slums of Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire’s economic

hub, the cup is never half empty, but always half full.

In other words, she is an optimist.

“Of 640 people hospitalized over the past two years, half of them died,”

she said, leafing through a large notebook. She sighed, looked away and

managed a smile. “But the good news is that the others all went home.”

Few health clinics in Abidjan are as efficiently run as ‘Centre l’Espoir

- which means ‘The Hope Centre’ in French.

It is built smack in the middle of one of the poorest neighborhoods of

Abidjan - Adjouffou, an area of sandy flat land near the city's airport.

From all over Abidjan, people living with AIDS find their way to this

clinic. They often arrive there after having spent all their money on

medical bills to consult doctors who are afraid to tell them what they

really suffer from.

Latrous was a housewife and a mother of three when she befriended an

Ivorian doctor who invited her to assist him while he gave free

consultations in Adjouffou. Affordable basic health care was non-existent

in Abidjan at the time.

Before long, she began using her contacts within the expatriate community

to raise funds for a small clinic.

She opened a dispensary in 1999. Three-and-a-half years later, a second

building was inaugurated, focusing on adults in an advanced stage of AIDS.

Today, Latrous, who is in her early fifties, not only runs the clinic -

she also lives here, in a tiny room next to ‘her’ patients. Pictures of

her children, who live with her husband in Egypt, decorate the wall

alongside her bed.

The dispensary consists of roofed-over containers housing a laboratory, an

office, two sick rooms for day patients and a pharmacy.

The AIDS clinic is housed in a separate low brick building with a large

open-air courtyard where some patients sit chatting around a table, while

others snooze comfortably on sofas.

Latrous believes that the HIV prevalence rate in this poor neighbourhood

is much higher than the official average of 9.5 percent for Cote d'Ivoire

as a whole.

This country, which has been partitioned by civil war for the past two

years, has the highest rate of HIV prevalence in West Africa.

And although it remains the most prosperous country in the region, many of

its inhabitants are still very poor.

“A lot of people can only afford one meal a day, which costs about as much

as one condom,” Latrous said.

“In the dispensary, we started receiving a lot of people with possible

symptoms of AIDS, such as diarrhea, tuberculosis and weight loss. So I

decided to offer free blood tests. And what I saw was really, really

frightening: of the generation born between 1960 and 1975, seven out of 10

people tested positive.”

The dispensary offers basic medical care to everyone at only 300 CFA

francs (55 US cents) per visit. In five years it has carried out over

100,000 consultations.

Latrous’ indefatigability, her frank manner of speaking about HIV/AIDS and

her caring, almost motherly approach to people living with the virus have

earned her centre its reputation as a uniquely successful AIDS clinic.

Latrous believes that the main problem with AIDS in Cote d'Ivoire, apart

from poverty, is taking the test.

“Public hospitals do not offer to test for HIV, even if a patient has all

the symptoms of AIDS. Doctors are afraid to tell the truth. And they make

more money this way. I once had a boy here with a letter from a public

hospital saying: ‘Please tell this young man he has AIDS’. This is

typical.”

Latrous said most Ivorians do not know that antiretroviral (ARV) drugs,

which are nowadays available at the government subsidised price of 5,000

CFA (US $9) per month, can prolong their lifespan by years, if not

decades.

So how does Latrous break the news?

“The day they find out they are seropositive is perhaps the best in their

life. That is what I tell them. Because you can not fight an illness you

don’t know. It’s like a ghost, invisible. You can only start fighting it

the day you know what it is. A lot of these poor people have spent a

fortune on hospital bills. Now they can finally try to get better.”

Centre l’Espoir runs entirely on gifts and donations. The nurses and

doctors are Ivorian. Two women of the Abidjan expatriate community help

out as volunteers. Several members of staff are HIV-positive, including a

watchman, the handyman and the female cooks.

Within the enclosure of the clinic, the subject of HIV/AIDS is discussed

more or less openly among staff members. But within the surrounding

neighbourhood, the topic remains taboo, despite Latrous’ near celebrity

status.

“I have the hardest time finding a garbage collector, because nobody will

touch our garbage,” Latrous said. “On the other hand, we can hang our

sheets out to dry anywhere we want, because nobody will steal them.”

Most of the patients in Centre l’Espoir are women. Latrous is critical of

African men - she thinks they have no sense of responsibility.

“African women think about their children first, that is why they will

take the test: they do not want their children to be orphans. But the

men - they are always afraid. They all have girlfriends on the side and

they do not want to know the truth. They would rather ‘share’ their

sickness with their wife.”

Thanks to the Centre l'Espoir, many Ivorian women will admit openly that

they are living with HIV/AIDS.

Earlier this year, Awa was brought in helpless, dazed and skinny as a

stick. Today, she is a healthy young woman with sparkling eyes who says

she owes her life to Lotti Latrous.

“Madame Lotti told me that I was seropositive, but it did not mean I’d

have to die. I take ARV’s now and I feel fine. There is nothing wrong with

me, and this is what I try to tell other people: it’s possible to live

with HIV/AIDS.”

Awa shares a small apartment with her mother and her six-year-old son.

“Of course, I take my precautions. I have my own toothbrush and razor

blade and I make sure that no one else uses them. You see, in this

neighborhood, people even share basic things like a toothbrush.”

[ENDS]

2 - KENYA: AIDS drugs to be manufactured within weeks

NAIROBI, 23 September (PLUSNEWS) - A Kenyan pharmaceutical company will

start manufacturing and selling generic versions of anti-retroviral AIDS

(ARVs) medications in the approaching weeks, a move that is expected to

make the drugs considerably cheaper for those infected with the HIV virus

across the East African region.

An international pharmaceutical firm, GlaxoKline (GSK), said on

Wednesday it had licensed Cosmos Pharmaceuticals Limited to make ARVs

containing Zidovudine and Lamivudine. The medicines will be marketed in

Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi. GlaxoKline holds patents

on both drugs.

" The door of access to essential medicines for the people of Kenya and

East Africa will now be open, " Cosmos Chairman and Managing Director,

Prakash Patel, said after signing the agreement in the Kenyan capital,

Nairobi, with Mwatu, the medical and regulatory affairs director

for GSK's Kenyan subsidiary.

Patel said Cosmos would be able to produce generic versions of

Zidovudine, currently sold by GSK as Retrovir, Lamivudine (Epivir) and the

combination of the two drugs known as Combivir within a " couple of weeks " .

The locally produced generics would push the monthly cost of treatment

down from about US $46 to $33, reports said.

Cosmos will be Africa's second manufacturer of generic-ARV drugs, after

the South African company Aspen Pharmacare, which announced a similar move

earlier this year.

Kenya's Trade and Industry Minister, Mukhisa Kituyi, who witnessed the

signing of the agreement, urged Cosmos to maintain high-quality standards

in the manufacturing process. " The quality of the product has to be

consistent, " the minister said.

Last month, the Kenyan government said it was making plans to provide ARVs

to 181,000 people living with HIV/AIDS by 2005. The number of

beneficiaries would rise to 250,000 by 2010, the health ministry said.

An estimated 1.5-million Kenyans have died of AIDS since 1984 while the

HIV-prevalence rate among people aged 15-49 years is seven percent. In

Uganda, the Health ministry estimates that some 120,000 Ugandans are

currently in need of ARVs, but only 25,000 get them.

[ENDS]

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