WEDNESDAY, 4 AUGUST 2004
201 U.S. Regulatory Agency Approves New AIDS Treatment Drugs
(Step could significantly simplify drug treatment regimen) (620)
202 National Tour Seeks to Collect, Share Stories of Civil
Rights Era
(Bus tour to document personal accounts of civil rights movement) (680)
203 Effective U.S. Diplomacy Requires More Arabic Speakers
(Former ambassador explores Islam in Africa) (720)
*AEF201 08/03/2004
U.S. Regulatory Agency Approves New AIDS Treatment Drugs
(Step could significantly simplify drug treatment regimen) (620)
By M. Charlene Porter
Washington File Staff Writer
Washington -- The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved two new fixed-dose combination drugs to combat HIV infection. The drugs should help to simplify treatment regimens for people living with the virus, according to an August 2 FDA press release.
Epzicom, manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline, and Truvada, manufactured by Gilead Sciences Inc., both work by combining drugs from different classes. Researchers have found in their 20-year study of HIV that the most effective way to attack the virus is to use drugs that disable the microbe in different ways.
This multiple-drug treatment plan creates a complicated regimen the patient must follow, involving the administration of a number of pills on a particular schedule.
"Simplifying treatment regimens by reducing the number of pills and times per day patients need to take them provides significant public health benefits," said Dr. Lester M. Crawford, acting commissioner of the FDA, in an agency press release.
Simplified treatment is of special importance in nations where there are fewer health care practitioners to monitor the patients and coax them through the difficult regimen.
Crawford said approval of these combination drugs will increase the availability of medicines to those who need them. With FDA approval, Epzicom and Truvada now become suitable products for use in treatment programs sponsored under the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). The $15 billion, five-year program aims to provide anti-retroviral drug treatment for 2 million people, in addition to care and assistance for people living with or affected by HIV/AIDS, and to expand AIDS prevention programs.
Since PEPFAR received its first congressionally authorized funding early this year, an additional 50,000 people living with HIV/AIDS in the program's 15 focus countries have begun to receive drug therapy, and U.S. government officials managing the program aim to boost those numbers rapidly.
The FDA has taken another step toward speeding the delivery of AIDS drugs to the hardest hit nations of the world with the initiation of a fast-track drug approval process. The agency has invited developing world pharmaceutical companies selling generic combination drugs in their regions to submit those medicines for an expedited FDA review.
"It is our firm belief that these steps will make a huge difference in the lives of people in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean, as well as the United States," Crawford said in a Washington speech.
Confronting health crises in their countries, developing world companies received patent waivers to copy and manufacture AIDS drugs invented by Western companies. If developing world companies submit their products for FDA review and if those so-called generic drugs receive FDA approval, then the United States will purchase them for expanding treatment under the PEPFAR program, officials say.
Critics have charged in the first few months of PEPFAR that the United States is not purchasing the cheaper generic drugs -- roughly one fifth the cost of brand-name drugs -- in order to direct its dollars only to Western pharmaceutical companies. U.S. Global AIDS Ambassador Randall Tobias dismisses the criticism saying the he wants consumers in other countries to benefit from the same tough regulatory scrutiny that protects American consumers from inferior products.
"We should not have two standards ... a standard of ‘good' in the Western world and ‘good enough' elsewhere. It ought to be the same standard," Tobias said at a briefing last month held at the XV International AIDS Conference in Bangkok, Thailand.
Ranbaxy Laborators Ltd. announced in late July that it will seek FDA approval for its combination AIDS drugs. The company, based in New Delhi, India, supplies AIDS drugs to about 40 countries
(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs,
U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
NNNN
*AEF202 08/03/2004
National Tour Seeks to Collect, Share Stories of Civil Rights Era
(Bus tour to document personal accounts of civil rights movement) (680)
By Todd Bullock
Washington File Staff Writer
Washington -- Betty Bunce, an 84-year-old former teacher, recalls with sadness the reaction of white parents when the New Orleans school where she taught was desegregated in November 1960. They removed their children and gathered in an angry mob outside the building to jeer the three black girls who were the only remaining students.
"For a school that was filled with white children, one would not believe how that school emptied out," Bunce said, adding "we didn't have a lot to do. The white children never came back. The next fall that school practically became an all-black school."
Experiences such as Bunce's bring personal testimony to many milestones of the decades-long push for Civil Rights, among them the 1954 Supreme Court decision ordering desegregation of public schools, increased voting rights through the 1960s and the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, which banned racial discrimination in businesses serving the public and in hiring.
In Brown v. Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the legal basis for school segregation in more than 20 states, ruling "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." However, many school districts in Southern states resisted desegregation for years, resulting in confrontations between white parents and authorities attempting to enforce the order, and tension between the federal government and resistant state and local officials.
Bunce's story is among the thousands being documented during the month of August as part of a 70-day nationwide tour to collect thousands of untold, firsthand accounts of the Civil Rights Movement.
"Many people are no longer living, or aren't going to live that much longer," said Bunce, explaining why she participated. "I have a story to tell that's of value to me, value to others."
The American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR) and the Library of Congress launched its Voices of the Civil Rights Bus Tour August 3 in Washington. The 70-day tour will pass through 35 cities, stopping at local commemorative events, before ending at the annual AARP Member Event in Las Vegas on October 14.
According to a Voices of Civil Rights press release, the bus-- staffed with journalists, photographers, and videographers -- will travel, interviewing local residents and helping to capture their civil rights stories.
"Accompanying the Bus Tour, will be an interactive "Digital Front Porch", where visitors can record their stories on audio or video. On an opposite side of the Porch, visitors can log on to the Internet and submit their stories electronically. Here visitors can learn more about civil rights history, including the tactics of peaceful demonstration and protest," said the fact sheet.
"The Freedom Rides of the 1960s were historic and this bus trip will honor and save that history," said AARP President Marie Smith. "These powerful recollections will be preserved and passed down to future generations, to both educate and inspire."
LCCR Executive Director Wade Henderson noted that the Bus Tour will collect stories from a diverse range of people-- including women, people with disabilities, students, and racial and ethnic minorities-- whose personal experiences tell the collective story of the Civil Rights Movement.
The tour is part of the Voices of the Civil Rights project, a multifaceted effort to build the world's largest archive of firsthand accounts of the Civil Rights Movement. Since March, nearly 2,000 previously untold stories have been submitted. The entire collection will be donated as a permanent collection to the Library of Congress.
Librarian of Congress James H. Billington noted, "The Library of Congress is honored to preserve this collection and make it available to people everywhere."
The project's Web site: www.voicesofcivilrights.org features a searchable archive of personal stories, articles on contemporary issues and project updates. Links to an interactive Bus Tour blog will allow visitors to track the day-to-day events through photos, videos, and journal entries.
(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs,
U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
NNNN
*AEF203 08/03/2004
Effective U.S. Diplomacy Requires More Arabic Speakers
(Former ambassador explores Islam in Africa) (720)
By Jim Fisher-Thompson
Washington File Staff Writer
Washington -- If the United States is going to be effective in the Horn of Africa and other Muslim countries and regions, it must have many more diplomats who speak Arabic and understand Islam, according to former U.S. Ambassador David Shinn.
In a talk that foreshadowed recommendations of the 9/11 Commission on Political Islam on the African subcontinent presented at the U.S. Institute for Peace July 9, Shinn asserted that the only way the United States will be able to foster greater dialogue and understanding with representatives of Islam is to train people in the language and religion that dominate the Muslim world.
Shinn said it was vital "to go beyond dialogue, public diplomacy and reporting. It is essential to identify and fund assistance projects that are desired by and beneficial to Islamic communities," which can only done if personnel are trained for such work.
For Shinn, who ended a 30-year Foreign Service career as U.S. Ambassador to Ethiopia in the mid 1990s and is now a professor at George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs, a basic place to start is for the United States to develop "a better understanding of the role of Islam and its diversity in the Horn of Africa and in other countries where Islam is the majority religion or constitutes an important minority."
Although the State Department sent seasoned diplomats and premier Arabists like Hume Horan and Norm Anderson to serve as ambassadors to Sudan, he said, "the Foreign Service is woefully short of personnel who speak Arabic and are schooled in the basics of Islam.
"Except for the embassy in Khartoum, where the U.S. has traditionally assigned a small number of Arabic-speaking officers, who are also knowledgeable about Islam, it is usually a complete accident when such individuals are assigned elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa," he added.
The result is that American embassies in the region are not staffed in a manner that permits them to provide the best analysis of issues related to Islam, Shinn pointed out. "There are just not enough officers with a comprehensive understanding of Islam."
On one side, he said, there is a complete absence of American staff today in key areas such as Kaduna and Kano in northern Nigeria, Mombasa in Kenya, Mogadishu in Somalia, Hargeisa in Somaliland and Zanzibar in Tanzania where the United States once had consulates. "You can't comprehend local developments in areas where you don't have any personnel."
Even when personnel are available, Shinn said, too often they "have little or no exposure to the Islamic world [and therefore] need to become more knowledgeable [in order to] increase efforts to reach out to local Islamic communities. This process has begun in some embassies, but much remains to be done."
On the policy front, Shinn noted that before the United States sets an African regional approach to Islam, "it needs to develop both in Washington and in missions overseas a much better comprehension about Islam in each African country where Islam is significant, and that is most of them."
But to achieve any real success, he said, there must be an effort to undercut financial support for promoting fundamentalism by replacing it "with Western aid to Islamic communities in Africa so that ordinary Muslims can improve their lives.
"African Muslims can build mosques with their own funds. Western countries need to improve the health care system, combat HIV/AIDS, build and support secular schools and help improve agriculture."
In that regard, the Center for Strategic and International Studies recent advisory report "Rising U.S. Stakes in Africa" proposes a continent-wide Muslim outreach initiative that includes at least $200 million in new funding annually.
He also suggested that in some countries, "the U.S., perhaps supported by others, might be in a position to suggest positive changes to the host government in the way that it treats Islamic minorities. This could be especially effective if linked to assistance projects supported by the U.S."
He added, "It would be especially helpful if wealthy Arab countries joined this effort without linking their aid to support for a fundamentalist philosophy. This will require some very frank talk with the Saudis."
(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs,
U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
NNNN
$$$$