The Clinton Foundation will help India's National AIDS Control Organization train 150,000 doctors over the next year to treat HIV/AIDS patients in the country, former President Clinton said on Thursday in New Delhi, the AP/Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports (Mahapatra, AP/Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 5/27). The program will provide Indian physicians with training in local HIV/AIDS epidemiology and virology; modes of HIV transmission, including mother-to-child, and disease progression; patient evaluation methods; case management; national antiretroviral drug guidelines; post-exposure prophylaxis; and treatment guidelines, according to a Clinton Foundation release. The U.K. Department for International Development will provide some of the funding and technical expertise for the initiative, according to the release (Clinton Foundation release, 5/26). Clinton said the lack of health care facilities and trained physicians in India is hindering HIV-positive people's access to treatment. The Clinton Foundation in September 2004 agreed to help NACO set up the Indian government's national antiretroviral treatment program in about 188 clinics and hospitals around the country, according to the Hindu.
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"In India, where an estimated 80% of health care services are provided by private-sector hospitals and private physicians, it is imperative that they are given the tools needed to provide standardized, high-quality care and treatment to those who need it," Clinton said at a national HIV/AIDS conference organized by NACO, the Clinton Foundation and the India Business Trust for HIV/AIDS (Dhar, Hindu, 5/27). The foundation has pledged to help NACO train up to 700,000 doctors over the next few years, Xinhuanet reports. "We need these trained doctors so that we can quickly spread drugs to all the people," Clinton, who is on a two-day visit to India to speak about HIV prevention and relief efforts in response to the December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, said (Xinhuanet, 5/26). "No one agency, public or private, can reach enough people," Susanna Moorehead, head of DFID in India, said, adding, "Private doctors are an important part of this partnership" (Clinton Foundation release, 5/26).
And while we're talking about India, The New York Times on Thursday examined efforts to treat HIV/AIDS patients in that country, "where stigma, poverty, an anemic public health system and the sheer scale of the pandemic combine in a daunting challenge." Although the country is a leader in exporting generic antiretroviral drugs, less than 2% of the estimated 500,000 HIV-positive Indians who need the drugs are receiving treatment at no cost, according to the Times (Sengupta, New York Times, 5/27).
In his brilliant book, The End of Poverty, economist Jeffrey Sachs speaks of different regions of the world trying to work their way "up the ladder", starting at extreme poverty. India is a classic example of a country that is no longer on the bottom rung. There are doctors to train. Meanwhile in Africa, the doctors are few and far between. This is a real-world example of two regions, dealing with the same crisis, but from different places on the ladder. It's one thing to read the theory in the book - it's another to see the reality in the newspaper and TV news.
(Data from Kaiser Network.org)
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