A Vital Weapon Against HIV/Aids

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A Vital Weapon Against HIV/Aids

allAfrica.com

GUEST COLUMN

November 30, 2005

Posted to the web November 30, 2005

C. Payne Lucas

The worldwide destruction brought on by HIV/Aids cannot be overcome by

an after-the-fact crisis management approach. We need a war mindset.

The pandemic calls for a multi-pronged attack, especially in Africa,

where the havoc has been most disastrous and threatens to undo 50

years of hard-won progress in public health, education, and development.

Some effective strategies are already being applied. Public health

drives promote condom use and discourage multiple sex partners.

Enlightenment campaigns target high-risk populations such as long-haul

truckers. Further, there is increased distribution of subsidized

medicines to HIV-positive people.

But there is another anti-HIV/Aids weapon that promises to yield

immediate, measurable results, although it is something Americans take

for granted: disposable syringes, or, more precisely, auto-disable

syringes. Auto-disable syringes employ an automatic mechanical locking

device that ensures syringes can only be used once.

Unsafe sex is just one of several culprits in the rapid spread of

HIV/Aids in Africa. Another problem, seldom discussed, is the

widespread re-use of syringes in cash-strapped, struggling hospitals,

clinics, rural health centers, and drugstores around the continent.

The World Health Organization estimates that nearly half of all

syringes are re-used in Africa.

Syringe re-use is a tragic and avoidable contributor to the spread of

HIV/Aids, hepatitis, and other blood infections in Africa. Unsafe

syringes cause an estimated 100,000 new HIV infections per year, plus

hundreds of thousands of cases of hepatitis B and C. With morbid

irony, these contaminated syringes transmit diseases to people trying

to get well or stay, including children getting immunizations.

Syringes are being re-used in African communities for one simple

reason: auto-disable syringes are not widely available and affordable.

The effort now being made by one nonprofit organization to build an

auto-disable syringe factory in Port Harcourt, Nigeria would help

prevent this avoidable tragedy.

The Pan African Health Foundation, whose mission is to fund

sustainable projects to relieve the medical supply shortage in Africa,

is raising funds for a factory that would produce more than 100

million such syringes each year. As an added benefit, the factory

would use local labor to manufacture these life-saving supplies on a

not-for-profit basis. This means the syringes will be available at

subsidized rates that cover only the cost of production - well below

prices charged by for-profit manufacturers who ship their products at

great expense from distant locations. Eventually, the Foundation also

plans to build a factory that would produce mosquito nets for fighting

malaria.

The syringe project has the full support of both Nigeria's federal

government and the state government where the factory will be built.

Last November, when the Foundation broke ground on the site of the

future syringe factory, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo was there

to lay the cornerstone and continues to be an enthusiastic supporter.

Some three million people died of HIV/Aids in 2004 alone. More than

two-thirds of these deaths happened in sub-Saharan Africa, exacting

growing economic and social consequences. Those men, women, and

children are vital to their families-as husbands, wives, brothers,

sisters, daughters and sons. They are vital to their communities as

teachers, farmers, traders, miners, police officers, nurses and office

workers. The losses of these lives leave in their wake a growing

orphan crisis, manpower shortages, and poverty, among other serious

challenges.

To overcome the catastrophe, we must raise awareness, raise money, and

do everything we can to find better ways to fight the disease

effectively. That is why I have dedicated the balance of my career to

ensuring that we win the war against HIV/Aids in Africa. We must not

let this virus undo the considerable strides that Africa has made in

the past half century.

C. Payne Lucas, before retiring, served as president of the nonprofit

organization Africare for 31 years. He is senior advisor to the Pan

African Health Foundation and the AllAfrica Foundation

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