Where AIDS drugs work
‘MANY PEOPLE IN AFRICA have never seen a clock or a watch in their entire lives,” said Andrew Natsios, the former head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, when asked in 2001 why more Africans didn’t have access to lifesaving AIDS drugs. Only when we have proof Africans could take their medicines on schedule, Natsios said, should we make the drugs available to everyone.
His comments were, of course, ludicrously narrow-minded, if not bigoted. Nonetheless, such thinking remains all too common, even among experts whose decisions affect the lives of millions of people around the world. To this day, concern that people in Africa are incapable of following a strict AIDS drug regimen is one reason some experts maintain that we shouldn’t increase the continent’s access to HIV medicines more quickly.
A recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Assn. proves it’s time to end this nonsense once and for all.
The largest and most extensive review on the topic to date analyzed nearly 30,000 poor and HIV-infected patients in North America and sub-Saharan Africa. The results? Just 55% of North Americans take their medications as directed, and 77% of sub-Saharan Africans adhere to their regimens.
What this shows, researchers believe, is that people in poor countries may actually work harder to stay on their medications, realizing they have little or even no access to other medical care if they don’t.
The number of Africans who have access to AIDS medications has increased in recent years. But four out of five infected people still can’t get treatment, which is why another 2 million people in the region died of the disease last year.
For that number to decrease, major donor countries -- especially the United States -- will have to continue to significantly increase the amount of money they’re spending to fight the disease. They also must help poor countries find a better way to manage and distribute the aid.
These are the issues the world needs to focus on when the subject turns to AIDS. To debate whether people who are given lifesaving medications are intelligent enough to know what is best for them is worse than pointless. It’s insulting.
