Johannesburg - Cutting funding for HIV/AIDS treatment would
condemn millions of poor people to death, international medical NGO
Medecins Sans Frontieres said Thursday, amid signs of Western
governments starting to back-track on their commitments.
Two major funders of AIDS treatment in poor countries - the Global
Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and the US President's
Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) - are considering scaling
back or freeze their funding levels, MSF said in Johannesburg.
The Global Fund is considering taking a 'gap year' from funding
AIDS programmes in 2010 while PEPFAR plans to freeze funding at the
same level for two years - despite previously promising to increase
its funding for treatment, according to MSF.
Many African countries rely heavily on either or both of these two
sources to fund the treatment programmes that keep millions of their
HIV-positive citizens alive.
Freezing or cutting funding to these programmes - after world
leaders in 2005 promised to support universal AIDS treatment coverage
by 2010 - 'would be an international betrayal,' Dr Eric Goemaere, MSF
medical coordinator in South Africa, said.
Freezing funding at the same level would mean that new patients
could not be enrolled on treatment until someone else died.
Four million HIV-positive people are currently on anti-retroviral
therapy worldwide. More than 6 million more people are in need of the
treatment, according to MSF, which released a report entitled
'Punishing Success? Early signs of a Retreat from Commitment to
HIV/AIDS Care and Treatment.'
'The HIV/AIDS emergency is definitely not over,' Dr Tido von
Schoen-Angerer, Director of MSF's Access to Essential Medicines
Campaign warned.
Some donor governments are trying to divert resources from
HIV/AIDS to other diseases that are cheaper to treat, but said
Schoen-Angerer: 'This cannot be an either/or game.
'Cutting HIV/AIDS funding is not the answer.'
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