‘What if the HIV epidemic first manifested in poor countries?’

Japheth Mati

This week’s call by Doctors Peter Piot, David Heymann and Jeremy Farrar urging US authorities and WHO to make available for African Ebola patients, the same treatment already given to the two American missionaries, Dr Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol, reminds me of the above question I raised in a blog I wrote in 2012.

In the article I compared the unprecedented brisk response to the HIV epidemic with the dilatory reaction to the so-called ‘neglected tropical diseases’. The contrast is regrettably dependent on who the patient is: the high profile wealthy and powerful versus the poor and powerless.

I believe it is because of the former that within less than a decade of the first AIDS case in San Fransisco, several drugs had received FDA approval. In other words, authorities were prepared to ‘bend rules’ in order to permit early availability of life-saving treatment.

Now Dr Piot and colleagues tell us that there are in fact several drugs and vaccines under study that could be used to combat the disease.

In a desperate situation such as in the West African countries, it is difficult to imagine what else makes the relevant authorities not ‘bend rules’ as they did previously, to avail experimental treatment where it is needed the most?