International AIDS Society Newsletter, no. 21

I AS
INTERNATIONAL
AIDS SOCIETY

options in trouble, the availability of treatment is highly volatile and some essential
services are at serious risk, leaving many of
the 5,000 AIDS patients using alternative
services without sufficient coverage. In turn
this leads to extra pressure on public services
as many more patients seek a route to the
care they need.
The unfolding crisis in Argentina marks
its good record as a country with a long tradition of strongly committed healthcare
providers, well-established local NGOs and
PLWHA networks that are aware and have
tried to combat the structural problems the
country faces. The NGOs and the Argentine
AIDS Society (SAS), a society that follows
the pattern of the IAS, joined forces in a Crisis Emergency Committee almost immediately after the situation started to deteriorate
and began a strong lobbying campaign
denouncing publicly the specific consequences
that the sanitary emergency was having on
the PLWHA. The acute crisis obliged the
new government to decree the national sanitary emergency and review all the standard
purchasing and distribution procedures.
Until December 2001, as almost everywhere in the underdeveloped world, the
debate in Argentina had focused on the

access to ARV drugs and the struggle
between licensed and generic medicines.
Public indicators are showing diminishing
mortality and morbidity rates since antiretroviral therapies were introduced as standard
treatment in 1997 in spite of the fact that
many of the drugs used are copies and quality control is still missing. Even though many
of the drugs used are copies and quality controls are still missing in the country, the
political and economic momentum obliged
to shift the focus to the need of maintaining
and guaranteeing the access to ARV's.
While the country starts to rebuild its
economy, and before it is able to take care of
a comprehensive national AIDS program by
itself, the new administration is looking for
foreign assistance. To guarantee drug availability, the World Bank is prepared to finance
ARV therapy expenses for the next 18 months.
However, the funding does not represent new
investment. Money will be diverted away
from other social programs funded previously
by the Bank. Argentina has also presented an
ambitious national project plan to the
UNAIDS Global Fund's Committee and has
already got a five year budget for the implementation of prevention programs that would
otherwise be impossible to develop.

The rapidly deteriorating social condition
of an important sector of Argentinean communities and the strong impact that this has
had on PLWHA, means that it is critical to
address social issues as a whole and not purely
medical ones.
Shamefully the Argentine situation is not
an uncommon one. The main threat to an
effective strategy to tackle the AIDS epidemic
is once again routed in financial mismanagement and corruption. The main obstacle
jeopardizing an effective strategy against the
AIDS epidemic is poverty. Unfair distribution of wealth, the heavy burden of the external debt and years of mismanagement, inefficiency and corruption are to be overcome in
order to win this battle against HIV/AIDS.
In order to prevent the isolation of communities and individuals, the breakdown of
families and local networks, help in bridging
this crisis is desperately needed. PLWHA,
non-governmental organizations and healthcare providers have joined forces to this end
and will fight for the preservation of the
rights of the people of Argentina, rights for
which these people and their predecessors
have fought long and hard.

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