SUMMARY | FULL STORY
GLOBAL HEALTH
Answering AIDS
Harvard Faculty Shake Status Quo to Treat Poor
A movement to provide medicines to the world's sick and poor is gaining momentum, and at the forefront is a group of leaders from the Harvard community. Appealing to the collective conscience of wealthy nations, they assert that good health is good economics, and that we can no longer allow poor people to die, untreated, of AIDS, TB, and other infectious diseases that account for 90 percent of mortality in developing countries.
Jim Yong Kim (left) and economist Jeffrey Sachs are spearheading a global effort to treat tuberculosis, AIDS, and other infectious diseases in the developing world. Kim photo by Graham Ramsay. Sachs photo by Jon Chase, Harvard University News Office
"Throughout the world, communities like ours are desperately seeking medications," said Jim Kim, HMS assistant professor of medical anthropology and cofounder of Partners in Health. The organization oversees community-based treatment of AIDS in Haiti and of multidrug resistant tuberculosis in the shantytowns of Lima, Peru.
Until recently, the high price of drugs to treat these illnesses prevented their widespread use in poor countries. But last year, the WHO, working with Partners in Health, Médecins Sans Frontières, and the pharmaceutical industry, negotiated lower prices for the antibiotics used to treat multidrug resistant TB. The cost of antiretroviral medications for AIDS is expected to follow suit.
With reduced prices, wealthy countries can well afford to ensure access to critical medicines globally. So says a report to the U.N. by the Commission for Macroeconomics and Health. Jeffery Sachs, chairman of the commission and the Galen L. Stone professor of international trade at Harvard, said that a mere $8 billion a year is needed to fight AIDS, TB, and malaria. Not only would this lead to better economic conditions and political stabilization, the report says, these efforts would eventually save money.
If money and drugs do become available, the urgent question is how can delivery be ramped up? Research by Partners in Health in Haiti and Peru shows that the complex treatment regimens work even in the poorest settings.
"Withholding money while medicines are available is not only morally repugnant," Kim said, "but it contributes to a downward spiral of poverty and violence."
--Anne Mahon
Copyright 2002 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
