World YWCA, World AIDS Campaign and Women Won’t Wait Campaign
World AIDS Day Statement
Although there
are encouraging signs regarding progress in the response to HIV, around the
world, there are nearly 16 million women are living with HIV. In sub-Saharan Africa, the
region home to 22.4 million people living with HIV, three out of five adults
and three out of four young people living with the virus are female.
In every region
of the world, incidence rates of HIV infection among women are increasing.
The AIDS
pandemic has changed the fabric of communities around the world and created a
particular burden in the lives of many people, especially women and girls. In
many settings where the health care system is already overburdened, women have
stepped in and filled the gap and the funding on women’s rights has been key to
success.
Yet, AIDS
continues to be the leading cause of death and disease for women of
reproductive age.
This is further
compounded by the inequalities women face. Worldwide, seven out of ten of the
world’s poor are women—living on less than a dollar a day and at least one in
three women has been beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise abused in her
lifetime. It is widely recognised that violence is both a cause and consequence
of HIV transmission.
Today, women
living with HIV continue to experience gross human rights violations that
relate to their sexual and reproductive health. In fact, human rights has often
been characterised by governments as a great imposition, and so addressed more
in the breach than in respect and accountability, most especially when it comes
to those who are made vulnerable by the lack of human rights.
In 2006, governments
promised to provide Universal Access to HIV prevention, treatment, care and
support for all those in need by December 2010. Sadly, most government have not
delivered on this commitment.
The World YWCA,
the World AIDS Campaign and the Women Won’t Wait Campaign call for strong and
accountable leadership from governments for effective and sustainable solutions
to HIV that uphold and protect the human rights of all women, especially young
and women living with HIV. The rights of women must be upheld and implicit for
an effective HIV response.
From research
conducted for the production of the film ‘Where did the money go? Women’s rights and HIV’ developed
by the World YWCA, the World AIDS Campaign and the Women Won’t Wait Campaign,
it was clear that the money exists. The financial crisis and economic recession
that is affecting most of the globe has had little effect on levels of military
expenditure. The total global military expenditure in 2009 is estimated at
US$1,5 trillion [1], Another example is
the global bank bailout. The latest figures for bailout money amounted to
US$8.5 trillion [2]. This spending shows
the disparity and the lack of commitment to supporting communities in urgent
need of universal access. Where is the money for women’s health, education,
treatment, access to services, equality – Where is the money for women’s rights
and HIV and AIDS?
If holistic and
comprehensive solutions are to be achieved, funding must increased
significantly and should go beyond financing traditional HIV programmes.
Funding should include programmes and actions that empower women and girls as a
strategic solution to reduce the impact of HIV and AIDS.
On World AIDS
Day 2010, on the eve of the Universal Access deadline, the World YWCA, the World AIDS Campaign and the Women
Won’t Wait Campaign call on governments to:
1. Deliver on
the commitment to achieve universal access to treatment, prevention, care and
support for all people, including through ensuring that national budgets
address women’s rights and HIV by:
a. Empowering
women and girls, especially those living with HIV as an integral and
indivisible part of any HIV response
b. Establishing
programs to prevent and redress violence against women and girls, and increase
investment and access to sexual and reproductive health services with a rights
based approach.
2. Promote
gender equality and human rights of women and girls, including laws and
services that protect and enable women to claim their rights.
3. Implement
strategies, which lead to equitable representation and meaningful involvement
of women in political, executive, legislative and judicial structures around
the world including other decisions making bodies that address HIV strategies
and programming.
4. Provide
physical, sexual and psychological safety and security for women and girls.
As Hillary
Clinton said in Beijing in 1995, “human rights are women's rights - and women's
rights are human rights. Let us not forget that among those rights are the
right to speak freely - and the right to be heard. Women must enjoy the right
to participate fully in the social and political lives of their countries if we
want freedom and democracy to thrive and endure.” We demand that governments
fulfil their promises and remove the barriers that prevent women and girls from
accessing services for HIV that ensure their health and wellbeing.
Where
is the Money for HIV and AIDS ( www.moneyforaids.org);is a consortium of
regional and international organisations raising awareness of inadequate
funding, corruption, and waste of money and resources in the AIDS response.
Inspired by a campaign created by the AIDS and Rights Alliance for Southern
Africa (ARASA), Where is the Money for HIV and AIDS is coordinated by the
Brazilian NGO Gestos and the Art and Global Health Center at the University of California, Los
Angeles. The project
is developed in partnership with Asia Pacific Council of AIDS Service
Organisations (APCASO), the Caribbean Broadcast Media Partnership on HIV
(CBMP), the Latin America and the Caribbean Council of AIDS Service Organisations
(LACCASO), the Networking HIV/AIDS Community of South Africa (NACOSA), the
World YWCA, and the World AIDS Campaign. The project is supported by the Ford
Foundation.
[1] Stockholm
International Peace Research Institute Yearbook 2010
[2] http://keepamericafree.com/?p=35
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/sarah-boseley-global-health/2011/jul/12/aids-pharmaceuticals-industry/print
HIV/AIDS-POOR COUNTRIES TO BENEFIT FROM PATENT DRUGS
AGREEMENT
Medicines Patent Pool agreement with Gilead Sciences
allows Indian generics companies to make cheap copies of some of the best Aids
drugs
People with HIV
in poor countries have a real prospect of obtaining not just the basic, cheap
drugs to keep the virus at bay, but some of the best medicines that are on
offer anywhere in the world - at a price their governments can afford.
This remarkable
turnaround is due to the Medicines Patent Pool, headed by the formidable Ellen
't Hoen, which has taken a concept many thought would never work and made it
reality. On Tuesday, the patent pool announced its first licensing agreement
with a pharmaceutical company, Gilead Sciences, a world leader in HIV
medicines.
Gilead is the
first pharma company to agree to put specific drug patents in the
"pool". This will allow generic companies in India to make cheap
copies of them for use in poor countries with major Aids epidemics. Even more
importantly, the generics companies will also be allowed to make combinations
of drugs from different companies (provided other companies follow Gilead's
lead). In an ideal world, anybody with HIV who needed medication would be able
to take a single pill once a day in which three or four medicines are combined.
Gilead is to be
congratulated. It has agreed to let Indian manufacturers copy and combine not
only two important licensed drugs, tenofovir and emtricitabine, but also two
drugs that are still under clinical development and do not yet have a licence,
cobicistat and elvitegravir. Gilead is itself developing a single pill called
the "quad", which will combine all four drugs. Generics companies
will also be allowed to start copying that too. With such a head start, it
means that cheap generic versions can be ready for distribution as soon as
Gilead gets its licences from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). This
is what Ellen 't Hoen said to me:
It provides a very significant improvement over the current status quo. These
pipeline products really show the importance of it [the patent pool]. It will
shorten the delays. Countries used to have to wait for years to get access to
new medicines.
There is more
too. Tenofovir is a hugely important HIV drug, which has lately been considered
as a possible tool for preventing infection. It was the drug used in a vaginal
gel in the CAPRISA trial in South Africa. The trial found women who used it
were 39% less likely to become infected with HIV. Gilead has allowed generic
companies to make copies of this important product, but the agreement will
ensure access for more countries. The company is also going to allow generic
versions for treating hepatitis B, for which tenofovir is also licensed.
The real value
of the patent pool starts to become clear in this deal. The big pharma
companies with important and lucrative Aids drugs have been willing to allow
generic copies to be made, but on the basis of a deal here in India and another
there in South Africa. Now - as long as Gilead's move is just the start - there
will conceivably be a "one stop shop". 't Hoen says she will be
encouraging generics companies to apply as early as this week. Her vision is of
a multitude of generics companies making drugs - and driving the prices down
through competition. Now that it has been shown that putting people with HIV on
treatment makes them less likely to infect others, there is all the more reason
to get good treatment to as many people as possible as early as possible.
Unitaid, which
works for low prices for Aids drugs and was the launchpad for the patent pool,
is delighted with the announcement. "We are sure now that the savings and
price reductions that we have been working for over the last five years will
continue to happen in the future," said Philippe Duneton, deputy executive
secretary.
Mohga
Kamal-Yanni, Oxfam senior health policy adviser, urged other companies to
follow Gilead into the pool. "Other pharmaceutical companies now have no
excuse for refusing to licence their drugs to the pool. Companies such as ViiV
and Merck who are already in discussions with the pool need to get on board as
quickly as possible to ensure the best possible medicines are made available to
poor people at affordable prices. Others, such as Abbott, which have so far
failed to engage at all with the pool should be ashamed of themselves and
should start negotiations as soon as possible."