Delivering the goods — UK committee quizzes DFID on universal treatment access
29 November 2005
‘The best and boldest HIV-treatment target the world has seen in more than 20 years’ is how the Stop AIDS Campaign (of which the Alliance is a part) has described the UK government’s achievement at July’s G8 summit in negotiating a commitment to universal access to HIV and AIDS treatment by 2010. The challenge is now to turn this commitment into action.
This Stop AIDS Campaign comment forms part of written evidence prepared by the Alliance and submitted to an International Development Committee meeting in Westminster on 22 November. The meeting allowed a committee of UK MPs to scrutinise progress in delivering anti-retrovirals (ARVs) in developing countries. They focused on international strategies as well as the UK contribution to the universal access target, finding a need for greater policy coherence on HIV and AIDS across Whitehall.
Representing the Stop AIDS Campaign at the committee meeting, Mandeep Dhaliwal from the Alliance and Tom Ellman from Médicins Sans Frontières said that the UK government must maintain its significant global leadership on HIV and AIDS and translate it into immediate action to increase access to ARV treatment. Despite a growing political commitment across the world to treat and prevent HIV and AIDS, there is still an estimated resource shortfall of US$18 billion between 2005 and 2007, according to UNAIDS figures. UK government funding needs to increase to part-meet the shortfall.
Stop AIDS Campaign has demanded swift, efficient and co-operative leadership from United Nations agencies as they develop operational and technical plans towards reaching the universal treatment target. The Alliance, as part of the Stop AIDS Campaign, is hoping for a constructive dialogue with UNAIDS as the lead agency responsible for implementing universal access, making sure that together we tackle the next steps towards the target with urgency and commitment.
Many of the Alliance’s partners have concerns about the UK Department for International Development’s (DFID’s) translation of global leadership into country-level programme action. In its evidence to the committee, the Stop AIDS Campaign said that many DFID offices are not yet oriented towards comprehensive HIV programming, and need to be reorganised for a rapid scale up of universal access in high-prevalence countries.
In an important admission, DFID, on behalf of the UK government, acknowledged at the meeting that International Monetary Fund constraints hinder spending on HIV at country level. The Stop AIDS Campaign gave evidence that International Monetary Fund fiscal constraints are discouraging governments from spending on public health, leading to poor infrastructure and a human resource crisis that limits HIV programming.
The Stop AIDS Campaign has also questioned DFID’s lack of progress on access to generic drugs – unbranded medicines that are much cheaper than their patented equivalents. Although the 2001 World Trade Organisation Doha Declaration on TRIPs (Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) said that patents should not prevent governments from meeting public health needs, TRIPs still make it difficult for millions of people to access affordable generic ARVs.
The Stop AIDS Campaign and the Alliance will be following up on the policy issues raised at the committee hearings.
About Stop AIDS Campaign
The Stop AIDS Campaign (www.stopaidscampaign.org.uk) represents more than 80 UK-based organisations who are fighting HIV and AIDS in developing countries. The campaign is part of the Make Poverty History mobilisation, and works alongside other networks that focus on debt, aid and trade justice.
