Swiss urged to boost contribution to Aids fund

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As an international Aids conference begins in Barcelona, Switzerland has come under fire for not providing enough money to fight the disease.

The Swiss Aids Federation and the Swiss branch of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said the national pledge of $10 million to the global fund to fight Aids was insufficient.

They said the amount was comparable to Nigeria’s contribution and only a fraction of the sum granted by other European countries like the Netherlands and Italy.

“We should make it possible for every affected person worldwide to get medical treatment and the Swiss authorities and Swiss pharmaceuticals should be part of that effort,” said Jan Suter, who heads the international department of the Swiss Aids Federation.

He pointed out that the Swiss contribution worked out at SFr2 per person per year.

Nigeria has also pledged $10 million while European countries like Italy and the Netherlands have respectively offered $200 million and $127 million.

Wait and see

However, the Swiss Development Agency, which is responsible for the country’s contribution to the global fund, rebutted the charges of inadequacy.

“Ten million dollars is one per cent of the total official development assistance of Switzerland,” said Jacques Martin, who handles the Aids portfolio.

“One day we were contributing zero francs to the fund and the day after it was SFr10 million. From this point of view, we feel it is slightly unjust to say that we are not doing enough.”

Martin said Switzerland had made it clear that this was a first contribution and that more would depend on results.

“It is legitimate for us to see how things will develop, whether the claim that the fund will make a difference will be justified, whether the people who need assistance will get it appropriately,” he told swissinfo. “Then we will review the situation.”

It was originally hoped that payments to the global fund would be in addition to countries’ development assistance budgets. However Switzerland, like most developed countries, is merely shuffling existing resources.

Martin said the money came from unallocated funds so it had not been taken away from other projects.

Drastic action

In its latest report, issued this week, the joint United Nations programme on HIV/Aids (UNAids) said more than 40 million people worldwide are living with HIV and that within the next 20 years, 70 million people will die unless drastic action is taken.

“The economic, social and political consequences of this epidemic are already proving catastrophic in parts of Africa,” UNAids press officer, Dominique de Santis, told swissinfo.

She said more than 28 million Africans are living with HIV today and in some countries more than 30 per cent of the adult population is infected.

“The most visible sign we’re seeing is the impact Aids is having on life expectancy. Life expectancy has now dropped from a peak of 62 years before Aids to a low of 37 years in Botswana, for example, so that is obviously having a severe impact on the most productive years of a person’s life and, of course, that is having an impact on the economy as well. We know that in some of the worst hit countries in Africa, a third of teachers are dying as a result of Aids.”

Global phenomenon

While Africa is particularly badly affected by the disease, Aids is a truly global phenomenon and is now spreading rapidly in eastern Europe and east Asia.

Leila Kramis, press officer at MSF Switzerland said western nations must export to the developing and emerging world the sort of measures that have already been at least partially successful in wealthy societies.

Only 30,000 people in Africa, for example, are being given the drugs which keep infected men and women alive in the west.

“The message we are taking to Barcelona is that treatment is feasible,” Kramis told swissinfo. “We are doing pilot projects in 12 countries and these programmes show that treatment is feasible. The necessity now is to scale up the number of patients that can benefit from treatment.”

In one project in Cameroon involving 150 patients, MSF has managed to reduce the price of three-drug cocktails from about $1,500 a year to about $300 a year by putting pressure on pharmaceutical companies and introducing generic alternatives.

However, Suter said discount prices were still too high and only available for a limited selection of drugs.

He called for funding for antiretroviral drugs as well as pressure on the pharmaceutical companies to relax their patents and agree a fair price for these treatments.

“The pharmaceutical companies always tell us they do not want to make profits in the southern hemisphere or in resource-weak countries but they do and they negotiate prices on a case-by case basis which is not a good thing. They should globally lower prices and get their returns from our developments in the northern countries.”

The United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, has issued an appeal for $7-10 billion a year to fight Aids. The global fund has so far received $2 billion.

Signs of complacency

Meanwhile, there may be signs of complacency in rich countries like Switzerland where more than 20,000 people are HIV positive and more than 5,100 people have died of Aids.

“Last year for the first time in nine years, we saw an increase about eight per cent in the number of positive HIV tests,” said Suzanne Matuschek, head of the Aids section at the Federal Health office, who is leading a five-strong delegation to Barcelona.

“At the moment we are looking at this year’s figures and we have to wait until we can judge whether this is a trend that will continue this year or whether it was just a fluctuation.”

Both governmental and non-governmental organisations in Switzerland agree that Barcelona will provide a valuable opportunity to exchange ideas and fight stigma and discrimination.

“We need a lot more money, a lot more goodwill, a lot more understanding to really be able to fight this illness,” said Ruth Rutman, director of the Swiss Aids Federation.

“This is not an illness which is a bit here and a bit there. It is an illness which concerns us all.”

by Vincent Landon