The business world mobilised in the fight against HIV/AIDS

[30 November 2007 - 14h24]
[mis à jour le 30 November 2007 à 14h25]

Pharmaceutical laboratories, NGOs and inter-governmental agencies are working together in the field to combat HIV/AIDS. Numerous initiatives have been launched since the start of the pandemic – mainly on the continent of Africa.

Prevention programmes, therapeutic education, training of healthcare professionals, development of access to healthcare… The fight against HIV/AIDS requires heavy investment of both financial and human resources. Yet with none of the governments of the countries most affected by the pandemic in a position to meet such costs help has had to come from elsewhere. For example, for the last 9 years the GSK Foundation, has been engaged in 13 different countries. In total, 77 healthcare access projects have been undertaken. Not forgetting that more than 520,000 Africans have been given information on the disease, how to protect themselves from it and how to get screening. Always in collaboration with local NGOs.

For their part, the Boehringer-Ingehlheim laboratories are supporting a prevention programme in 50 countries against mother-to-child transmission of HIV. This summer in Malawi, in partnership with UNICEF and the European Commission, they celebrated an important milestone: more than one million mothers have been effectively treated. And the Pfizer company is active through a number of programmes such as the Global Health Fellows Program, which enables employees to conduct fieldwork missions for NGOs.

Lastly, Merck Sharp & Dohme (MSD) have reduced by half the price of their antiretroviral drugs for developing countries. More than 540,000 patients in 76 countries now benefit from these today. Another initiative is the training of healthcare professionals. In cooperation with the University of Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso), the Pierre et Marie Curie University (Paris VI) and the French anti-AIDS organisation the SFLS, every year more than 100 West African doctors, nurses and pharmacists receive specific training in HIV/AIDS.

More generally, 220 businesses worldwide have come together under the aegis of the Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, to produce very concrete actions targeting their employees and their relatives … An important mobilisation but one which unfortunately is insufficient to counter a pandemic. Every year this disease continues to kill 2.1 million people worldwide.

Source : GSK Foundation, Pfizer, MSD, November 2007

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