Nairobi, Kenya — The US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, spent Sunday morning on the edge of one of Africas largest slums - Kibera, in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi - and witnessed the devastation caused by HIV/AIDS in a country where health officials say some 2.5 million people are HIV-positive.
Powell did not see for himself the poverty of the sprawling Kenyan shantytown during his one-hour visit to the outskirts. But he came face to face with the impact of AIDS and the desperation it causes when he listened to the story of Patricia Asero Ochieng, an HIV-positive AIDS counsellor and activist with the Kenya Coalition for Access to Essential Medicines.
Ochieng, who is 33 and has been living with HIV/AIDS for the past 11 years, told an attentive audience, including Powell, that anti-retroviral drugs could have saved the lives of her husband and infant son. Both died of AIDS.
Ochieng said her husband had died two days after catching a cold and then pneumonia: "I felt so bad knowing that there were drugs that could maybe have prolonged his life, but we could not afford this medicine and yet they were there."
She made a powerful plea to Powell to allow Kenya to import cheaper generic copies of AIDS drugs or to ensure that the cost of the medication was radically reduced.
"I do have a very special appeal to you and the US government to give more funds to Africa for treatment and to promote generic competition," Ochieng told Powell, deviating from her passionately-delivered speech. She then offered him a red AIDS ribbon.
Powell thanked Ochieng for her comments and accepted her ribbon, saying later, "I am moved by her plea for us all, the United States and all nations, to do what we can to get treatment costs down to the lowest possible ... so that we can make them more widely available to all who need those drugs."
In his unscripted address, Powell expressed sympathy about the dilemma and concern for the AIDS problems in Kenya, saying the syndrome was "more than a health issue. This is a social issue, this is a political issue, this is an economic issue, this is an issue of poverty, it is an issue of the destruction of a society."
But he reacted cautiously and made no firm promises about reducing the cost of AIDS drugs when he responded to Patricia Ochieng, other local activists and members of the Kibera community, as well as Kenyas vice president, Professor George Saitoti, the Health Minister and other government officials who accompanied the US secretary of State on his tour of the HIV/AIDS outreach programme.
Ochieng and her Kenya Coalition partners urged Powell to back a bill scheduled for debate in Kenya's parliament early next month that could approve legislation to allow the import of cheap versions of brand name medicines, including anti-retroviral AIDS drugs.
Campaigners from non-governmental organisations and the medical profession have launched a campaign to lobby members of parliament to approve the bill. It is estimated that five hundred Kenyans die from HIV-related illnesses every day. Activists say only about a thousand out of more than two million local sufferers have access to expensive triple combination drug therapy. More than half of the population earns less than US$1 a day.
The move to make anti-retroviral and other appropriate medication cheaper has been bitterly opposed by the international pharmaceutical industry. Five leading drug corporations took the South African government to court, challenging a law to permit the sale of cheaper versions of their own brands. In a humiliating climbdown last month, however, the five were forced, under public and shareholder pressure, to drop their lawsuit amid accusations that they were putting profits before human life.
Ochieng said she had no quarrel with the global drug firms, but she wanted to see them act humanely. She and her three children, one an adopted Aids orphan, and dozens of other campaigners wore distinctive black t-shirts with the words "Put life before profit" emblazoned in red across the chest and "Make HIV-AIDS medicines affordable to all" on the back.
Before Colin Powell arrived for the workshop, journalists witnessed activists being told by American officials to fold up a large hand-held banner with the same messages on it, which had been unfurled in full view of the VIP dais.
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US President George W Bush pledged US$200m in early May towards the United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annans appeal for a global fund to fight AIDS. But critics, among them members of the Kenya Coalition for Access to Essential Medicines, have dismissed this as "woefully inadequate."
"President Bush and his administration will do everything they can to seek out and find that (AIDS) cure, a cure that will hopefully be available to people all over the world," Powell told the gathering in Kibera, adding: "I want you to know that the US is in this battle with you. We will battle, we will win."
He also announced that the United States would be contributing US$8m to the fight against AIDS in Kenya. Powells visit to the AIDS workshop was his last stop in Nairobi before he left for neighbouring Uganda on Sunday.
