UNAIDS: The First 10 Years

UNAIDS The First 10 Years68At the panel session on business and the epidemic, Piot laid out the grim statistics to illustratehow AIDS was affecting business and gave examples of companies that were already takingaction. He then called on the leaders present to become involved and to create with UNAIDSa Global Business Council. He certainly convinced Sykes, who instructed Plumley to set up theCouncil, with the involvement of other interested businesses such as Levis and MTV.Some eight months later, in October 1997, this council was launched in Edinburgh, Scotland,where the Commonwealth Heads of State and Government meeting was taking place.Mandela was its Honorary President and Sykes was Chair.“But at the start”, recalled Plumley, “the business response was like getting blood out ofa stone”. Only a few major companies were really involved and until around 2001, it was a“very, very difficult exercise”. It took a small number of key leaders, as in other sectors, tostart to change thinking in their companies. Also, by 2000, AIDS was becoming more visible,and companies were experiencing more absenteeism caused by HIV.The Drug Access Initiative: affordable drugs forpoorer countriesPresident Jacques Chiracof France at the10thInternational Conference onAIDS and STIs in Africa,Abidjan, December 1997.Fraternité MatinFollowing the announcement about antiretroviral therapy at theVancouver International AIDS Conference in 1996, the pressurewas on to provide access to treatment to all who needed it. Butthe costs of drugs were huge. Even if countries were prepared toconsider providing these drugs, they had to weigh the expenditureagainst their very limited resources for all health problems.Working for DFID in India, Cleves confronted this dilemma: “I waslooking at how much money we had for AIDS [and the budgetwas considerable] but if we had paid for drugs for just a smallnumber of people with AIDS, there would have been no moneyfor anything else”.At the ICASA meeting in Abidjan, on 7 December 1997, PresidentJacques Chirac of France argued for setting up an internationalfund to provide drugs – the International Therapeutic SolidarityFund for People living with HIV/AIDS – but other donors opposedhis suggestion. They questioned the sustainability of such aproject given the costs and the parlous nature of most developing countries’ health services.Treatment activists piled on the pressure and UNAIDS was certainly involved in the debate.At the third PCB meeting in 1996, a request was made for UNAIDS by PCB members to‘enhance its activities in the areas of access to ART [antiretroviral treatment], drugs for associatedconditions, and care’.