Zambia: New Research Confirms AIDS Drugs a Lifeline for Africa

On Sunday at the 16th International AIDS Conference, researchers reported that a study in Lusaka shows AIDS drugs can be administered safely and effectively in sub-Saharan Africa.

U.S. doctors tracked the effects of an outreach, begun in April 2004, in which 16,198 patients in the Zambian capital were treated with antiretrovirals.

When the effort began, some desperately ill patients were "literally arriving in wheelbarrows," said Dr. Jeff Stringer of the Center for Infectious Disease Research in Zambia and the University of Alabama-Birmingham. For 1,142 patients with advanced AIDS, the help came too late.

After 90 days of treatment, however, mortality rates nosedived to levels comparable to those of patients in wealthy countries. Eighteen months into the program, Stringer said, the lives of the "vast majority" of patients had been saved, and many had returned to work.

Contrary to the early arguments of those who said antiretroviral therapy would not be effective in difficult African settings, Stringer said the Lusaka project shows that the drugs can be successfully administered in an urban environment in a poor country. Thirty thousand patients are now enrolled in the treatment effort.

Key to the program's success, said Stringer, are the Zambian government's leadership in scrapping patient fees, money from the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, a computerized program that track's patient compliance, and the imaginative use of semi-skilled workers to encourage regimen adherence.

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