Copyright 2000 Globe Newspaper Company
The Boston
Globe
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August 28, 2000, Monday ,THIRD EDITION
SECTION: OP-ED; Pg. A15
LENGTH: 850 words
HEADLINE:
SALIH BOOKER Salih Booker is director of the Africa Policy
Information Center in Washington and the Africa Fund in New
York.;
USE THE SURPLUS TO FIGHT AIDS
BYLINE: By SALIH BOOKER
BODY:
The recent US proposal to lend Africa $1
billion a year at commercial rates for the purchase of antiviral
AIDS drugs is a cruel hoax at best and a vivid example of
government-subsidized corporate greed at worst.
The plan aims to protect
American pharmaceutical companies threatened by African rights under the World
Trade Organization's rules to pursue parallel imports and compulsory
licensing of anti-AIDS drugs. In other words, the US
government is prepared to push Africa further into debt in
order to prevent Africans from getting cheaper drugs from Brazil or India or
from licensing local firms to produce generic versions at home.
African governments already spend more on debt
repayment to wealthy nations than on their own countries' health and education
combined.
The International AIDS Conference recently
held in Durban, South Africa, generated tremendous news
coverage as a sort of rediscovery of the AIDS pandemic and
convinced the Clinton administration that they needed to do something beyond yet
another meager request for additional funding for AIDS
programs. Setting up a debt financing program through the Export-Import Bank
requires no funding from Congress and offers dramatic headlines because of the
price tag.
But the news out of Durban was not new. This was the 13th
annual event, and no government can claim that it never saw the
AIDS plague coming. Mind-boggling estimates of the spread of
HIV were available more than a decade ago. But because Africa
has become the epicenter of the pandemic, the world is not yet willing to act.
Africa is facing a deadly plague while prosperous
Western countries spend huge amounts of money on finding cures for baldness and
obesity. The continent is home to an estimated 80 percent of the world's
HIV/AIDS population.
This crisis is a stark reminder of
the double standard that has marginalized African lives for the past 500 years
and that now divides the world between rich and poor, white and black. At the
moment, support from international donors to fight AIDS
worldwide is estimated at $300 million a year. An effective
budget for prevention alone in Sub-Saharan Africa would require
about $3 billion.
Yet as US politicians line up to
debate how much of the surplus to spend on tax cuts, the option of allocating a
significant part of the surplus to fighting AIDS is not even on
the table. Because the victims are predominantly black, the wealthy,
predominantly white countries fail to respond with more than token resources.
Almost none of the people affected by AIDS in
Africa have access to the life-saving drugs that have brought
hope to millions of
patients in the West. This is far more than a health
issue: AIDS is wiping out large portions of the work force and
crippling national economies. More people may die of AIDS in
Africa than died in World War I, World War II, Korea, and
Vietnam combined.
Multiple strategies to fight the epidemic are
available and can make a dramatic difference even in the worst-affected
countries. Prevention strategies, from AIDS education to condom
distribution, do work when they are implemented on a large scale. This has been
amply shown in countries such as Uganda and Senegal. A comprehensive strategy
also requires restoring basic health services, which have been slashed
throughout Africa. And it must include steps to promote women's
rights and change male attitudes, since a large proportion of
AIDS patients in Africa are women infected by
men.
Making affordable drugs and treatment available rather than
restricting them to patients in rich countries is a moral imperative. It is also
essential for prevention. Effective prevention requires public willingness to be
tested, but as a South Africa AIDS activist recently remarked,
why go to the doctor if you know in advance that the medicine cupboard will be
bare?
Cancellation of unpayable debts could enable African countries to
dedicate higher proportions of their budgets to combating AIDS.
Here again pledges from rich countries are not matched by action when budget
decisions are made.
US decision makers have not broken out of the
business-as-usual budget process that regards spending on global health as an
afterthought at best and any spending on Africa as wasteful.
The result is that tens of millions of human beings, overwhelmingly Africans,
are written off as expendable.
In this election year, candidates for
president and for Congress should consider dedicating a modest 5 percent of the
annual budget surplus - approximately $9.5 billion a year - to
a global health emergency fund. This would still fall short of the effort
needed, but it would be a leap above the paltry $325 million in
President Clinton's current request to Congress for HIV/AIDS
worldwide. And it would send a signal that US politicians share a sense of
global responsibility rather than regarding globalization only as an opportunity
for corporate profit.
The United States hesitates at its own peril, for
the only thing more dangerous to humanity than AIDS itself is
the double standard.
LOAD-DATE: August 29, 2000
