[Ip-health] extracts from WSJ and Boston Globe

[Ingrid_COX@msf.org]

Extracts from the press following MSF press conference yesterday in
Barcelona...

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Boston Globe, 8th July 2002

HIV toll heavier on US blacks
New cases on rise in disadvantaged

By JOHN DONNELLY, Globe Staff

[...]

Morton Rostrup, international president of Medecins Sans Frontieres, a
group that won the Nobel Prize for its health and advocacy work,
called the lack of money for treatment of poor people a "crime against
humanity."

"We see an inertia in the war against AIDS," he said. "As doctors we
are knowingly letting our patients die. We are knowingly letting
children become orphans. We are knowingly watching our health systems
break apart. What are we going to do about it?"

Sipho Mthahi of the Treatment Action Campaign said that treatment of
poor people is "no longer a favor that governments do, that the United
States and other countries do, but it is a fundamental human right."

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Wall Street Journal, 7 July 2002

AIDS Talks in Barcelona to Start Amid Hopeful Research Findings

By MARK SCHOOFS and RACHEL ZIMMERMAN

[...]

Some experts have doubted that the complex AIDS drug regimens that
have saved many lives in developed countries would work in
impoverished settings, where many people lack basics such as clean
water and decent housing. But Doctors without Borders, the Nobel
Prize-winning group known by its French acronym MSF, reported
promising results from 743 patients it has treated in seven poor
communities in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Most of these patients
suffered from advanced HIV disease with severe immune-system
deterioration. Such patients frequently are too sick for the drugs to
work. But among those who survived the first critical month on
treatment, more than 92% were alive at six months, and most had gained
weight and shown some immune-system restoration. Very few patients had
stopped treatment because of side effects, MSF reported, and more than
90% adhered to the daily pill-taking regimen.

"Our results demonstrate the dramatic benefits" of AIDS drugs in poor
settings, MSF said. "These results are all the more impressive as
these patients began [AIDS therapy] in advanced stage of disease."

END