Monday, December 19, 2005

Prudence

Barnaby Philip's third film for Newsnight (search "Prudence Radebe" audio video results on the Newsnight web site) on the struggle to get access to anti-retrovirals in South Africa (broadcast on 19 Dec) is an excellent piece of work. A useful note ahead of our forthcoming trip to Zambia.

Only about 85,000 out of South Africa's approximately five million HIV positive people can get the ARVs, which cost about £15 per person (not cheap, but affordable for a middle income country like RSA, even if you don't take into account the enormous benefits to the economy of bringing very large numbers of adults of working age back into the economically active population).

(another demonstration, as if it were needed that John le Carre and his film making successors, for all theirstory-telling skills, chose the wrong moment with The Constant Gardener. Big pharma is no longer the big villain, in this case at least) .

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