[Ip-health] Wall Street Journal: Gates, Clinton See AIDS Care-Delivery as Hurdle

[Thiru Balasubramaniam]

<SNIP>

In a separate development here, AIDS activists warned against
complacency on drug pricing. Doctors Without Borders blasted
public-health officials for having "their heads in the sand" over costly
and unavailable second-generation AIDS drugs needed abroad as resistance
rises among the poor now treated with cheap generics.

Still, Messrs. Gates and Clinton argued that the first step is to
strengthen health systems without which it is impossible even to
distribute drugs.

"The capacity to treat isn't so much gated by drug prices now as by
personnel," said Mr. Gates, the founder of Microsoft Corp. Efforts to
license and manufacture generic versions of AIDS drugs for poor
countries -- led by former President Clinton, among others -- have
brought the annual cost of treatment to as little as $130 a year, Mr.
Gates said. But even free drug programs go begging without massive
investment to bolster care-delivery systems, he said.

Mr. Gates offered as an example one of his own foundation's efforts, a
program that aimed to give away AIDS drugs in Botswana and that suffered
delays because of absent infrastructure.

"It was slow to start. I was very impatient," he said. "It was related
to personnel and training."

In another show of unity, Mr. Gates and Mr. Clinton strove to pay
respects to Pepfar, the $15 billion President's Emergency Program for
AIDS Relief, unpopular and oft-heckled here for its stress on abstinence
over condom use. Pepfar should be sustained, along with full funding of
the Geneva-based Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria, Mr. Gates said.


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Gates, Clinton See
AIDS Care-Delivery as Hurdle
By *MARILYN CHASE *
August 15, 2006; Page D3

TORONTO -- Weak health-care infrastructure in countries fighting the
AIDS virus poses the worst roadblock to corralling the epidemic, Bill
Gates and Bill Clinton agreed in a joint appearance here at a biennial
meeting on the disease.

Though the two men have long taken different approaches to fighting
AIDS, recently they have begun coordinating their efforts and last month
took a joint trip to South Africa. Partly as a result of visits to AIDS
facilities there, they said yesterday at the XVI International AIDS
Conference, was a shared recognition that with drug-discounting programs
under way, boosting investment in the people and facilities to deliver
drugs is "the No. 1 thing to be done," said former President Clinton.

In a separate development here, AIDS activists warned against
complacency on drug pricing. Doctors Without Borders blasted
public-health officials for having "their heads in the sand" over costly
and unavailable second-generation AIDS drugs needed abroad as resistance
rises among the poor now treated with cheap generics.

Still, Messrs. Gates and Clinton argued that the first step is to
strengthen health systems without which it is impossible even to
distribute drugs.

"The capacity to treat isn't so much gated by drug prices now as by
personnel," said Mr. Gates, the founder of Microsoft Corp. Efforts to
license and manufacture generic versions of AIDS drugs for poor
countries -- led by former President Clinton, among others -- have
brought the annual cost of treatment to as little as $130 a year, Mr.
Gates said. But even free drug programs go begging without massive
investment to bolster care-delivery systems, he said.

Mr. Gates offered as an example one of his own foundation's efforts, a
program that aimed to give away AIDS drugs in Botswana and that suffered
delays because of absent infrastructure.

"It was slow to start. I was very impatient," he said. "It was related
to personnel and training."

In another show of unity, Mr. Gates and Mr. Clinton strove to pay
respects to Pepfar, the $15 billion President's Emergency Program for
AIDS Relief, unpopular and oft-heckled here for its stress on abstinence
over condom use. Pepfar should be sustained, along with full funding of
the Geneva-based Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria, Mr. Gates said.

Mr. Gates, offered one upbeat note, saying a prevention pill with newly
reported safety -- along with a microbicide gel for women -- "could be
the next big breakthrough" ahead of a vaccine.

As Messrs. Clinton and Gates held court on one stage, members of the
African-American elite gathered on another stage in a carefully
orchestrated show of unity against what was long deemed a gay, white
disease.

"I never thought AIDS would be an issue for me at my age," said a
silver-haired Julian Bond, chairman of the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People. But leaders united by the Los
Angeles-based Black AIDS Institute, including the Rev. Jesse Jackson,
endorsed the tardy call to action because AIDS is now the top killer of
African-American women aged 24 to 34 years old, and is infecting
previously healthy black men in U.S. prisons.

Meanwhile, actor Richard Gere, co-chair of the Heroes Project, a
nongovernmental initiative to reduce AIDS stigma through the mass media,
signed an extension of an accord with Star TV in India.

Under the deal, Star will boost its commitment by about $9 million to
about $23 million worth of airtime through 2009 devoted to AIDS content
in public service announcements, dramatic serials and quiz shows.