a challenge to fight aids

By Jennifer Prather (Source: dukenews)

South African activist brings an HIV positive message: We can win the battle against AIDS

April 11, 2006: The HIV/AIDS epidemic is this century’s most critical challenge to humanity, and the only solution is to become politically organized, both on the local and the global level, said activist Zackie Achmat on Wednesday, April 5.

Achmat received a Nobel Peace Prize nomination for his work as a human rights and HIV/AIDS activist in his native South Africa. As a teen-ager, he demonstrated against the apartheid regime and was arrested and tried several times. He became active in promoting the African National Congress and in ending discrimination against gays and lesbians.

But it wasn’t until 1990 that he received, in the words of visiting Divinity Professor Peter Storey, “a sentence of death. Not by a regime, but by HIV.” Storey, an anti-apartheid-activist introduced Achmat, who was delivering the annual Karl von der Heyden Distinguished International Lecture.

Achmat found he was sentenced not only by the disease but by the negligence and skewed priorities of the South African government of Thabo Mbeki and “the willful and stubborn blindness by people who should have known better,” Storey said.

In his trademark “HIV Positive” black T-shirt, Achmat gave an energetic talk before about 150. He discussed his government’s denial of the relationship between HIV and AIDS and the daunting task of getting drugs to the millions of HIV-infected people around the globe.

Through his organization, Treatment Action Campaign, (TAC) Achmat has supported getting poor people the same treatment for HIV that is available in richer nations. He even refused for years to take his own antiretroviral medication, which he could afford, until it was available at a reasonable cost for everyone. The TAC’s lobbying efforts helped to bring about drastic reductions in the prices of Diflucan and AZT, and he was persuaded to begin treatment again in 2003.

He held up the efforts of TAC and other small non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as examples of how a small group of people could challenge governments and global corporations to act beyond their own self-interests.

The disaster of the AIDS epidemic is a challenge to all of us, Achmat said. “It is based on a frailty of conscience, not only of governments, but ourselves.”

He compared the global AIDS movement to the effort by abolitionists to stop the slave trade and end the practice of slavery in the 19th century. “A small group of people helped to end one of the worst injustices in the most powerful empire of that time,” Achmat said.

He outlined the common goals for which these groups should strive. One was a code of practical morality, he said. “Not the morality of George Bush, or the values of Pat Robertson or other religious leaders,” he said. All human life must be valued equally in dignity, freedom and access to common goods and services, he said. People need access to condoms, not moral judgment, he added.

HIV/AIDS is not just a disease that kills gay men and intravenous drug users. In South Africa, the highest rate of transmission occurs in women 25-29 years old, Achmat said.

In India, which has the cheapest antiretrovirals, sex workers and poor working class individuals are afraid to get treatment from the doctors and nurses in the health system because of the stigma that is attached to the HIV-positive, he said.

The second goal is to recognize the rights of women and girls, he said. Women must be given equal access to jobs, education and health care to achieve economic security, he said.

In addition, there must be a scientific approach to public health, Achmat said. He criticized a recent Harper’s Magazine article that suggested that the link between HIV and immune deficiency syndromes has not been satisfactorily proven and that millions of Africans are not dying of HIV infection but a series of other causes.

He called for scientists to explain the causes of AIDS better to those who are “scientifically illiterate” and to conduct drug trials in a safe and scientifically rigorous manner.

Finally, he said, governments and companies should be held accountable for laws and policies that make it more difficult to get medical treatment to the people who need them.

Achmat criticized drug companies for treating tuberculosis as a “non-market disease.” TB medicines that were discovered more than 40 years ago are still being used with little incentive for companies to search for new ones, or for a new test for TB, which may take six weeks to return results. Results for HIV tests can be ready in as little as 15 minutes. It is estimated that one-third of AIDS patients worldwide and two-thirds of AIDS patients in sub-Saharan Africa have TB.

One issue is encouraging pharmaceutical companies provide drugs at affordable costs or to allow cheaper generic versions of their drugs to be sold in poorer nations, he said. Governments must be urged to find a balance between protecting the intellectual property rights of drug companies and allowing access to treatment to all patients, regardless of their ability to pay.

Most of all, Achmat said people must think beyond the politics of personal identity and to claim citizenship globally. It is a natural instinct to look away from challenges that seem too huge and insurmountable, he said, but even three people together can educate and bring about change on the local level.

“The most important thing we can do is make a change in ourselves.”