[Originally posted on the UNC Health Care blog]
Stephanie wrote this…
No, I am not talking about the Chinua Achebe novel, but did you happen to read the New York Times articles about the war on global AIDS and its losing battle? The numbers are staggering and the reality of what this disease is doing to communities, families, and individuals is mind blowing. For this reason, I had to get one of our infectious disease experts to weigh in.
Dr. Charlie van der Horst (r) in Malawi
I emailed Dr. Charlie van der Horst, professor of medicine, associate director of the UNC AIDS Clinical Trials Unit and director of the Development Core at the UNC Center for AIDS Research, to get his perspective of things. He has worked in South Africa and Malawi conducting clinical research since 2001.
He too believes the economy is partly to blame for a losing battle with this disease because important programs for patients in the United States are no longer being funded either. “We [too] now have waiting lists for drugs in almost every state due to the underfunding of the AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP) which receives funding from both federal and state governments,” van der Horst says. “These programs target the working poor. However, if patients are unable to access treatment, they will become sicker and have to stop work. Sicker patients means frequent hospital admissions. In total it all means that the taxpayer bears the costly burden for this penny wise, pound foolish decision.”
Dr. van der Horst says almost thirty years into the HIV/AIDS epidemic, a dent has yet to be made in the number of new infections worldwide over the last 20 years. He suggests it is the increase in new global infections along with a lack of government transparency that fuels donor fatigue. “In sub-Saharan Africa, there has been a dearth of leadership by the governments in many of these countries,” van der Horst says. He adds, “Those countries buying limousines for the ministers, and spending money on guns instead of on their citizens, need to take over the AIDS programs from the U.S. taxpayers.”
That said, Dr. van der Horst is not convinced that the money well is completely dry. “The European Union and the International Monetary Fund just found $1 trillion to pay off the debt of Greece. Our last administration found more than a trillion dollars to help bailout major corporations. Finding $27 billion is a drop in the bucket.”