(UNICAMP - 2003- 2 fase - Questo 20)AIDS: An Endle

(UNICAMP - 2003 - 2 fase - Questão 20)

AIDS: An Endless Battle?

No one expected last week’s 14th International AIDS Conference in Barcelona to be a festive affair. But the dismal revelations of the conference were still shocking. Every day 15,000 people are infected by the HIV virus. Women make up 58 percent of the 28.5 million sub-Saharan Africans who are HIV-positive. (This will cut birth rates dramatically in the coming years). And fewer than 4 percent of the 6 million people in the world who have AIDS receive adequate anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs). The list of sobering data is almost endless.

Even seemingly positive news was in fact negative: the announcement of a U.S. donation of $500 million over the next year and a half to prevent mother-to-child transmission and improve health-caredelivery systems in 12 African nations and the Caribean was drowned out by calls for much more – and by boos and jeers. Hopes of a vaccine are few and far between. Although VaxGen hopes to have results of clinical trials for its vaccine by early next year, most believe it will fail like all those before it. Even if does work, it would fight only the B-strain HIV virus, which is common in Europe and North America, not the A-strain dominant in Africa.

But there was some actual good news. Brazil, by producing its own generic ARVs and distributing them free since 1996, has managed to halve its rate of AIDS-related deaths. The country’s representatives announced last week that Brazil would try to help other Third World nations to improve their capability to develop their own generic drugs. Oxfam also announced that countries that have successfully developed their own generic drugs have in turn created more competitive markets, forcing large pharmaceutical companies to lower the prices of their own patented AIDS drugs. And Médecins Sans Frontières presented the results of a study proving the feasibility of treatment in “diverse health-care settings” like poor townships and rural clinics.

None of these moves - nor “Sesame Street’s” announcement that it will introduce an HIV-positive Muppet on its South African version in order to educate children – will be the cure. But they are all small steps. And at this stage of AIDS war, the world needs to take any kind of step it can.

MALCOLM BEITH

Newsweek, julho de 2002

a) Considerando o universo total de pessoas infectadas por HIV hoje no mundo, quantas recebem tratamento adequado para a doença?

b) Como foi recebida a proposta de ajuda dos Estados Unidos?

c) Qual a expectativa dos participantes do congresso em relação ao anúncio da nova vacina?