WHO report says AIDS offers healthcare opportunity
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《英国医生杂志》
Geneva
Dr Lee Jong-wook, director general of the World Health Organization, has said that the organisation's goal of getting lifesaving antiretroviral drugs to three million patients with HIV or AIDS in the developing world by 2005 presents a golden opportunity to put in place desperately needed basic healthcare systems.
In the preface to WHO's annual report on global health Dr Lee said that funds for tackling the AIDS crisis could in turn establish lasting health systems for the future treatment and prevention of disease in the developing world.
"A message that runs through these pages is that progress in health, including rapid and sustainable expansion of emergency treatments, depends on viable national and local health systems," Dr Lee said in the report, which was released on 18 December.
"Scaling up anti-retroviral therapy in resource-poor settings has to be done in such a way as to strengthen health systems based on primary care," he wrote.
The report concluded that improving primary health care in developing countries was the key to fighting the spread not only of the world's biggest killer disease, AIDS, but also a whole host of other communicable diseases and non-communicable diseases, such as high blood pressure, heart disease, and stroke.
Two nurses from a mobile clinic treat a mother and her child in Mutare, Zimbabwe
Credit: TIM NUNN/PANOS
The report, which aims to raise awareness of global health priorities among government health departments and donors, said that the gap between the state of people's health in rich countries and poor countries had widened in 2002 because of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. This, it said, was starkly illustrated by life expectancies of 85 years among women in Japan and of 36 years among women in Sierra Leone.
Amid the grim assessments, however, the WHO report struck an optimistic note, saying that recent success in halting the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), in virtually eradicating polio, and in radical new treatment for tuberculosis could show the way forward to tackling AIDS and other epidemics.
It said that rapid response teams of experts sent to areas experiencing an outbreak of SARS had provided a model for WHO's teams of experts on HIV and AIDS sent to stricken regions, while simplified treatment for tuberculosis had inspired simplified treatments for HIV and AIDS in the form of three in one antiretroviral pills.
The report said international cooperation that helped eradicate polio in all but seven countries was exemplary and a model for fighting HIV and AIDS.
The report found that heart disease was the second biggest killer, after AIDS related diseases. This was because people in developing countries were living longer and faced an epidemic of cardiovascular diseases such as heart disease and stroke caused by smoking, lack of exercise, and unhealthy diets.
See editorial, p6
Related Article
WHO's World Health Report 2003
Gill Walt
BMJ 2004 328: 6.(Fiona Fleck)
Dr Lee Jong-wook, director general of the World Health Organization, has said that the organisation's goal of getting lifesaving antiretroviral drugs to three million patients with HIV or AIDS in the developing world by 2005 presents a golden opportunity to put in place desperately needed basic healthcare systems.
In the preface to WHO's annual report on global health Dr Lee said that funds for tackling the AIDS crisis could in turn establish lasting health systems for the future treatment and prevention of disease in the developing world.
"A message that runs through these pages is that progress in health, including rapid and sustainable expansion of emergency treatments, depends on viable national and local health systems," Dr Lee said in the report, which was released on 18 December.
"Scaling up anti-retroviral therapy in resource-poor settings has to be done in such a way as to strengthen health systems based on primary care," he wrote.
The report concluded that improving primary health care in developing countries was the key to fighting the spread not only of the world's biggest killer disease, AIDS, but also a whole host of other communicable diseases and non-communicable diseases, such as high blood pressure, heart disease, and stroke.
Two nurses from a mobile clinic treat a mother and her child in Mutare, Zimbabwe
Credit: TIM NUNN/PANOS
The report, which aims to raise awareness of global health priorities among government health departments and donors, said that the gap between the state of people's health in rich countries and poor countries had widened in 2002 because of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. This, it said, was starkly illustrated by life expectancies of 85 years among women in Japan and of 36 years among women in Sierra Leone.
Amid the grim assessments, however, the WHO report struck an optimistic note, saying that recent success in halting the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), in virtually eradicating polio, and in radical new treatment for tuberculosis could show the way forward to tackling AIDS and other epidemics.
It said that rapid response teams of experts sent to areas experiencing an outbreak of SARS had provided a model for WHO's teams of experts on HIV and AIDS sent to stricken regions, while simplified treatment for tuberculosis had inspired simplified treatments for HIV and AIDS in the form of three in one antiretroviral pills.
The report said international cooperation that helped eradicate polio in all but seven countries was exemplary and a model for fighting HIV and AIDS.
The report found that heart disease was the second biggest killer, after AIDS related diseases. This was because people in developing countries were living longer and faced an epidemic of cardiovascular diseases such as heart disease and stroke caused by smoking, lack of exercise, and unhealthy diets.
See editorial, p6
Related Article
WHO's World Health Report 2003
Gill Walt
BMJ 2004 328: 6.(Fiona Fleck)