Protesters target drug firms as AIDS conference opens in South Africa
DURBAN, South Africa -- As an international conference on AIDS prepared to open Sunday in Africa, protesters staged a spirited rally aimed squarely at drug companies and South African President Thabo Mbeki.Treatment Action Campaign, a South African-based umbrella group backed
by 230 AIDS organizations from around the world, staged a march in Durban,
South Africa, where the conference is being held, to demand that pharmaceutical
companies make affordable drugs available to poor, developing nations.
Declaration reiterates HIV causes AIDS
Much of the run-up to the conference has been dogged by controversy over Mbeki's appointment to a panel looking into the disease of scientists who doubt that HIV causes AIDS.In a show of force, 5,000 leading scientists from around the globe signed
the Durban Declaration, which proclaimed that evidence shows clearly and
without ambiguity that HIV is the cause of the epidemic.
"The data fulfill exactly the same criteria as for other viral diseases
such as polio, measles and smallpox," the declaration, recently published
in the medical journal The Lancet, states.
The scientists added that debate over the origins of the disease could hamper efforts to curb the epidemic.
Speaking
at a pre-conference briefing, Dr. Helen Rees, chair of South Africa's Medicines
Control Council, compared the impact of AIDS with war in Africa.
"Never before have countries experienced death rates of this magnitude among young adults of both sexes," she said. "You can see something like that among men in times of war, when you see a whole generation cut out between 20, 30, 40 years old ... the breadwinners, the parents, they are taken out of society by AIDS."
