- PARIS (Reuters) -- Two decades
into the global AIDS pandemic, governments around the world are finally
talking of committing tens of billions of dollars to fight the killer disease
in developing countries.
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- But Robert Gallo, the scientist who co-discovered HIV
in 1983, warned on Monday there were serious dangers from embarking on
widespread treatment in sub-Saharan Africa without adequate medical infrastructure.
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- "Obviously it is critical to get available drugs
to developing nations as quickly as possible, but not just to throw this
at them," Gallo, director of the U.S.-based Institute of Human Virology,
told Reuters.
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- "We've got to have infrastructure created at the
same time because we are going to create multi-drug resistant mutants if
we don't."
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- Gallo said AIDS patients needed extensive medical care,
including testing and monitoring to ensure compliance with drug regimens,
something that may simply be impractical in parts of Africa where many
do not have basic healthcare.
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- The issue of how to get drugs to the vast majority of
the world's 42 million HIV infected people is dominating discussions at
the International AIDS Society conference in Paris, where Gallo was speaking.
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- Activists say six million face imminent death without
access to affordable drugs and have urged governments to pledge more to
the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria in order to speed
up treatment in Africa, the center of the pandemic.
-
- President Bush in May signed into a law pledging $15
billion to help combat the deadly disease, trebling U.S. spending over
five years and sparking calls for other industrialized countries to dig
deeper in their pockets.
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- Gallo, however, is something of a dissenting voice in
the chorus of support for widespread treatment by highlighting the risk
that powerful antiretrovirals, if not taken correctly, can quickly induce
virus resistance.
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- "Nobody talks about that...the danger of failure
is very real in a few years if the drugs are just dumped there," Gallo
said.
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- "There'll be great happiness with the drugs being
made available, as I would see the future, for two to five years and then
we're going to start seeing problems if it is not done right."
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- Other speakers at the conference acknowledged the need
for on-the-ground medical expertise but argued the risk of resistance should
not deter the build-up of large treatment programs.
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- © Reuters 2003. All rights reserved.
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- http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=scienceNews&storyID=3085993
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