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World Economic Forum on Africa Begins; Reports Examine African Development

The World Economic Forum on Africa - a three-day event, which this year is focusing primarily “on the world economic downturn and how to lessen its effect on African economies” - kicked off Wednesday in Cape Town, South Africa, VOA News reports. South African President Jacob Zuma opened the forum and said that developing nations do not have the resources to respond to the world recession in the same way as industrialized economies. Zuma said, “For most African countries, that are still highly indebted and dependent on aid for their revenues, the continuation of the current crisis will mean increased starvation, poverty and child mortality” (Bobb, VOA News, 6/10).

At the forum’s opening conference, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the managing director of the World Bank and co-chair of the forum, said that an additional 53 million people worldwide - 60 percent of whom are in Africa - have been pushed into poverty because of the global economic situation, This Day/allAfrica.com reports. Okonjo-Iweala “stressed the imperative of investing in agriculture,” This Day/allAfrica.com reports, and said, “So I think the issue has been how African countries can sustain that momentum in this time of crisis. Africa cannot afford to be seen as a victim in this crisis.”

African Competitiveness Report Says Economic Crisis Threatens African Progress

The forum’s opening session featured the African Competitiveness Report 2009, released jointly by the African Development Bank, the World Bank and the World Economic Forum (Ani, This Day/allAfrica.com, 6/11). The report “showed Africa again languishing at the bottom of global competitiveness rankings because of bottlenecks in infrastructure, finance and communications,” the AP/Washington Post reports (Nullis, AP/Washington Post, 6/10).

Although there has been progress in recent years in developing Africa’s financial systems and increased economic stability, “the world economic crisis threatens to reverse years of financial progress in Africa as poor infrastructure, access to finance and trade barriers hamper competitiveness,” the report says, AFP/IC Publications reports (AFP/IC Publications, 6/10).

African Progress Panel Releases Report Highlighting Africa’s ‘Untapped’ Potential

The AP/Washington Post reports that a separate report indicated that “Africa would continue to need aid, but that it had enough potential and untapped resources to become a net food and energy exporter and to boost intercontinental trade” (AP/Washington Post, 6/10).

The annual report is put out by the African Progress Panel (APP), which is led by former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. According to Inter Press Service News Agency, the APP report says that Africa “cannot tackle the current situation alone. There is a shared responsibility for the crisis that requires joint response based on strong partnerships.”

Annan said, “Africa has not been affected as profoundly by the economic downturn as other parts of the world.” However, he added that “the crisis has underscored the continent’s vulnerability and is undermining the progress made over the past decade or so” (IPS, 6/11). AP/Washington Post writes of the progress: “The numbers of people living in poverty are leveling out, democracy and market reforms are entrenched in many countries, and great strides are being made against killer diseases such as AIDS and malaria” (AP/Washington Post, 6/10).

Graça Machel, an APP member and president of the Foundation for Community Development wrote an opinion piece in the Independent highlighting some of the report’s key points (6/11). IRIN/allAfrica.com published an article featuring highlights from the APP report (IRIN/allAfrica.com, 6/10).

This information was reprinted from globalhealth.kff.org with kind permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. You can view the entire Kaiser Daily Global Health Policy Report, search the archives and sign up for email delivery at globalhealth.kff.org.

© Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. All rights reserved.

The National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health has awarded a three-year, $3-million grant to Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University to establish a research center to study the neurological complications that afflict people infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

Despite the effectiveness of antiretroviral therapy for HIV, neurological complications associated with HIV infection - including cognitive, behavioral, and motor abnormalities - have become more common as infected individuals live longer.

“More than a quarter of those infected with HIV exhibit some form of cognitive impairment,” says Ruth Hogue Angeletti, Ph.D., professor of developmental & molecular biology and of biochemistry at Einstein, who will direct the Einstein Proteomics Research Center for HIV-Associated Neurological Disorders and Substance Abuse. “By the time HIV-infected people have progressed to AIDS, more than half display significant neurological deficits.”

This new proteomics center will use powerful mass spectrometers to identify the brain proteins responsible for neurological complications in people infected with HIV - particularly those who are also addicted to drugs. Proteomics is the branch of molecular biology that studies the set of proteins expressed by the genes of an organism.

HIV’s neurological complications (commonly referred to as neuro-AIDS) primarily stem from toxic proteins produced by immune cells called monocytes, which recruit HIV into the central nervous system. Neuro-AIDS can lead to AIDS dementia complex, HIV-related encephalitis, and fungal and parasitic infections.

The Einstein Proteomics Research Center will investigate the mechanism by which HIV infection causes neurological deficits and identify biomarkers that signal when these deficits begin and how they progress over time.

“The biomarkers identified by this new center should permit the early detection of neurological disease in HIV-infected individuals,” says co-principal investigator Harris Goldstein, M.D., director of the Einstein-Montefiore Center for AIDS Research and professor of pediatrics and of microbiology & immunology at Einstein.

“We have developed a unique transgenic HIV mouse model that displays some features of neuro-AIDS,” Dr. Goldstein notes. “By studying this mouse model in the proteomics center, we’ll be able to determine how HIV infection influences the proteins expressed in the brain. These results may help us to pinpoint new therapeutic targets for preventing the progression of this devastating consequence of HIV infection.”

Several studies of autopsy tissue show that the destructive neuro-AIDS process is worsened by drug abuse, particularly the use of opioids such as heroin. Unfortunately, the combination of HIV infection and drug addiction is all too common. In New York City, for example, more than half of all AIDS cases result directly or indirectly from injection drug use.

“Therefore, the intersection between HIV infection and opioid use represents an especially important area of neuro-AIDS research on which our proteomics center will focus,” says Dr. Angeletti.

Each of the center’s projects will evaluate the neurological effects of buprenorphine - a new, less-addictive alternative to methadone. Compared with methadone, buprenorphine can be given at higher doses with fewer adverse effects. But it could conceivably contribute to neurological problems when used by drugs addicts who are infected with HIV.

“The blood-brain barrier protects the brain from HIV-infected monocytes and other neuroinflammatory mediators, and we don’t yet know how buprenorphine affects this barrier,” says co-principal investigator Joan W. Berman, Ph.D., professor in the departments of pathology and microbiology & immunology at Einstein. “We need to understand buprenorphine’s neurological impact before use of the drug becomes widespread in this patient population.”

On the other hand, the center’s research may show that buprenorphine is a better alternative than methadone for people infected with HIV. “Because of its unique pharmacological properties, buprenorphine may provide neuropsychological benefits for HIV-infected people who are addicted to opioids,” says Julia H. Arnsten, M.D., M.P.H., the center’s other co-principal investigator and professor of medicine, of epidemiology & population health, and of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Einstein.

As part of the study, Dr. Arnsten will recruit a cohort of HIV-infected patients who are undergoing treatment for drug addiction. These people will be monitored to see whether buprenorphine influences the development of neurological deficits.

Other key investigators for this center are Dr. Louis Weiss in the departments of pathology and of medicine, Dr. Andras Fiser in the departments of systems & computational biology and of biochemistry, Dr. Abdissa Negassa in the department of epidemiology & population health, and Dr. Monica Rivera-Mindt in the department of psychology at Fordham University.

Source:
Deirdre Branley

Albert Einstein College of Medicine

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According to the results of a AFP/Google.com reports (AFP/Google.com, 6/9). The Telegraph writes, “HIV prevalence in children between 2 and 14 fell from 5.6 per cent in 2002 to 2.5 per cent last year, mainly thanks to the spread of drugs to prevent women passing on the virus to their children” (Telegraph, 6/10).

The study also revealed that while youth are continuing to have multiple sex partners, “they are increasingly heeding advice to use a condom,” according to the AP/Google.com (Nullis, AP/Google.com, 6/9). Rates of condom use among males between the ages of 15 and 24 rose from 57 percent in 2002 to 87 percent in 2008, and from 46 to 73 percent among females, according to Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) Chief Executive Officer Olive Shisana, SAPA/The Times reports (SAPA/The Times, 6/9). “The survey showed that messages that young people should abstain, delay their first sexual encounter and have only one partner, were falling largely on deaf ears,” the AP/Google.com writes (AP/Google.com, 6/9).

“The good news is that the change in HIV prevalence in children is most likely attributable to the successful implementation of several HIV-prevention interventions,” Shisana said (BBC, 6/9). “There is clearly light at the end of the tunnel,” said South Africa’s Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi, adding, “I am hoping that in the next few years the results will be much more encouraging than this” (Telegraph, 6/10).

South Africa’s overall HIV epidemic has stabilized at a prevalence rate of 10.9 percent for people aged two years and older (BBC, 6/9). IRIN reports, “The findings, based on interviews with about 21,000 individuals, 15,000 of whom agreed to anonymous HIV tests, give a fairly detailed picture of South Africa’s mixed success in fighting the largest HIV epidemic in the world” (IRIN, 6/9). AFP/Google.com writes that South Africa’s “situation remains grim” with 5.2 million people living with HIV/AIDS (AFP/Google.com, 6/9). According to VOA News, one in three women living in South Africa between the ages of 25 and 29 are HIV positive (VOA News, 6/9).

According to SAPA/The Times, the survey looked at the reach of some HIV/AIDS programs in the country and found that the government program Khomanani “had the lowest reach compared to other programmes such as Soul City and loveLife” (SAPA/The Times, 6/9).

The research was conduced by HSRC, Medical Research Council of South Africa, Centre for AIDS Development, Research and Evaluation, and National Institute for Communicable Diseases and funded by PEPFAR (HSRC press release, 6/9).

This information was reprinted from globalhealth.kff.org with kind permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. You can view the entire Kaiser Daily Global Health Policy Report, search the archives and sign up for email delivery at globalhealth.kff.org.

© Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. All rights reserved.