[Pharm-policy] More Than One Million Zambians To Die From AIDS

[James Love]

At our first conference on compulsory licensing, US government officials
expressed concern that countries would "abuse" the national emergency
provisions in the TRIPS (that pertain to fast track compulsory
licensing, without negotiation with the patent owner).  I think we are
beyond questioning the nature of the emergency, but we are yet to do
fast tract licensing in Africa.  Jamie

More Than One Million Zambians To Die From AIDS

Panafrican News Agency 
October 25, 2000 

Lusaka, Zambia 

About 600,000 Zambians have died from the deadly HIV/AIDS and by
2015 another 1.5 million will have died from the disease, World Health
Organisation Representative in Zambia, Edward Maganu, disclosed
Wednesday.

Maganu, quoting the recent estimates released by the country's
Central Board of Health, said 20 percent of the adult population in the
country are infected with HIV and that 300 Zambians are infected
daily.

As a result of the epidemic, life expectancy in Zambia has dropped
from 56 years to 38 years.

"Male infections peak at 30 to 39 years and female at 20- 29. A very
worrying trend is that girls 15 years to 19 years are four times more
likely to be infected with HIV as males are in that age group," Maganu
said at the opening of the Family Health Trust Strategic Planning
workshop in Lusaka.

He said the groups that are most vulnerable and most adversely
affected by the epidermis are the youth and young children who bear
the burden of disease directly passed on via mother-to-child
transmission.

Maganu noted that although estimation of the mother-to- child
transmission stood at 29 percent in 1997, figures may be as high at
40 percent now.

   [snip]

-- 
James Love  <love@cptech.org>  http://www.cptech.org
Consumer Project on Technology, P.O. Box 19367, Washington, DC 200036
voice 1.202.387.8030 fax 1.202.234.5176