EDITORIAL
All eyes are on Kenya, as she becomes the second country in Africa to enact legislation to import affordable generic AIDS drugs and the first country to use generic antiretrovirals to treat people living with HIV/AIDS. But amongst the celebrations, a dark side emerges: unless the necessary infrastructure and properly trained personnel are in place to monitor the use of these drugs and the patients receiving them, generic antiretrovirals may do much more harm than good. As Africanews Managing Editor Cathy Majtenyi discovered from the experts in Kenya, patients who fail to adhere to the strict regimen of AIDS drugs will end up developing resistance to that particular medication in as early as three months. And, if national standards to regulate the drugs use, monitor patients viral loads and CD4 counts, and test the quality of the generics are not in place, virtually all of Kenya s HIV/AIDS patients will be resistant to treatment. Bottom line: in as little as five years time, the 14 or so antiretrovirals currently on the market might lose their effectiveness to treat HIV/AIDS. It takes a minimum of 10 years for an antiretroviral to hit the market.
Stern warnings on AIDS medication compliance have also some from another quarter. The new United States' Agency for International Development (USAID) boss, Andrew Natsios made headlines in mid-June with his outrageous, racist argument that antiretroviral use in Africa would be a waste because Africans "don't know what Western time is" and therefore would not be able to stick to a drug schedule. While Natsios was not wrong to point out the difficulties of adhering to a strict medical regimen, he is way off the mark in ascribing such problems to Africans alone, writes our U.S. correspondent Linda Frommer. She highlights studies by American medical bodies that show that "imperfect adherence is common" in the US! The studies show that factors such as gender, race, socio-economic status, educational level, and past history of drug use cannot predict whether or not a patient will follow a strict drug regimen, just as a higher socio-economic status and educational levels do not guarantee compliance to that regimen.
To complete our package of AIDS coverage, Rodrick Mukumbira, our correspondent in Zimbabwe, tells us the stories of Nkululeko Siwela and Rebecca Chagonda, whose families and lives have been ripped apart by the AIDS scourge. His moving accounts of the "human face" of AIDS make the sometimes-abstract issues of treatment and prevent all the more urgent.
In other news& The U.S. Chocolate Manufacturers Association has pledged to fight child labourers in cocoa farms in Cote d Ivoire and Ghana, reports Africanews Staff writer Matthias Muindi. Meanwhile, Swaziland s King Mswati III has decided to ban any publications he deems offensive, a move that has international observers crying foul. But some residents of Africa s last absolute monarchy support the king saying, "it s about time," writes James Hall, our correspondent in Swaziland. Finally, a new report by the Kenya Human Rights Commission says that Kenya s ruling party, KANU, orchestrated a March 12 massacre on the Marakwet people of Northern Kenya as part of its plan to make sure it has sufficient support in the country s 2002 elections, writes Africanews Editor Clement Njoroge.
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