Hey
everyone,
Here’s
an interesting update on the ongoing global fight against HIV/AIDS. As
many of you may know, the Central African Republic is in the midst of their
third civil war, which started in 2013.
The general lack of human resources and humanitarian needs being met are contributing factors in the difficulties in fighting HIV/AIDS, but there are
also other factors in play.
In
recent years, stock-outs of ARV’s have had a detrimental effect, both socially
and physically. The stock-out is in part, due to the freeze of funding coming
from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria in response to
funds falling into corrupt hands and being spent irresponsibly. Although this strategy may be more effective
in terms of traceability of funds, it has created lasting damage to the
patients whose condition depends on these drugs. In order to make the current prescriptions of
ARV’s last longer, patients have taken to trying strategies that may in fact
reduce the effectiveness of the drugs and help the virus to become more
biologically resistant.
I
thought it was interesting that the article also focused on the fact that the
stock-out of ARV’s not only had devastating effects on the health of patients,
but also on the social perception of the doctors and organizations working to
improve health and standard of living in the area. The sporadic and untimely freezing of funds
has generated a difficult but understandable mistrust of the system put in
place. The interpretation of the
situation may also generate problems because people may chalk up the patient’s
resistance to the drug regime as simple “cultural reasons”. This ties in with the discussion we had last
meeting regarding how much of the problems being faced in the crossroads of the
medical world can be written off as a result of cultural difference and which
problems should be analyzed at a deeper level.
-Meg
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