Better health systems with more doctors and nurses urgently needed to help HIV and AIDS response

Oxfam Ireland Press Release
1 December 2007

A huge boost to the health systems and to the numbers of health workers in countries worst affected by HIV and AIDS is urgently needed as millions continue to be left without proper care, according to aid agency Oxfam Ireland.

Oxfam Ireland is working closely with local organisations in eight Sub-Saharan African countries to bring relief to people living with and affected by HIV and AIDS. There are currently around 33 million people worldwide living with HIV, most of them in Sub-Saharan Africa and a growing proportion of them are women.

Oxfam Ireland welcomes the Irish government's commitment towards tackling HIV and AIDS. It calls on the government to maintain this commitment while ensuring that the funding is used effectively to build the capacity of worst affected countries by investing in their public health systems including the recruitment, training and retention of more health workers. Oxfam Ireland also calls on the Irish government to act against barriers such as intellectual property rules contained within trade agreements which can limit the availability of treatments for HIV and AIDS and other diseases.

"We are beginning to make some progress in tackling the epidemic. But even though the HIV infection rate is reducing in some African countries where we work- such as Zimbabwe or Kenya- the lack of trained doctors, nurses and community health workers is without doubt slowing us down. To effectively treat HIV and AIDS, there needs to be more and better training, decent working conditions and adequate salaries for tens of thousands of new doctors and nurses. This will only happen if donors provide more of their aid for health to the public sector, and if developing countries prioritise health services in their national budgets", said Dr. Enida Friel, Oxfam Ireland's HIV and AIDS Programme Coordinator and lead of the Oxfam International HIV and AIDS Working Group.

In Malawi, one of the countries where Oxfam Ireland supports a programme on HIV and AIDS and livelihoods around two out of every three of the 187,000 HIV-positive people are now receiving treatment. Just five years ago almost no-one in Malawi was getting treatment. Survival rates are now at around 70%, which is a massive success story. However, the lack of treatment and care for tens of thousands of patients remains a huge problem.

Lingalireni Mihowa, an Oxfam staff member in Malawi says: ''It's a sad situation when poor Malawians waited this long to have access to free ARV drugs, and now the main barrier to accessing those drugs is the lack of doctors and nurses to administer those life-saving medicines. There are just not enough doctors and nurses to respond to the demands of patients. Luckily enough, the Government of Malawi is working with donors and the Global Fund to sort out the situation, but we have still reached a crisis point," she said.

Spokesperson:

Oxfam Ireland is an independent member of Oxfam International- a group of thirteen non-governmental agencies dedicated to fighting poverty and related injustice around the world.

Media Resources