EPN - Ecumenical Pharmaceutical Network

Following Abbot laboratories to withdraw the registration of its life-saving AIDS drug Kaletra^® (marketed as Aluvia) and six other essential medicines in Thailand, April 26th 2007 was marked as the Global day of Action against Abbot Laboratories. To add its voice to the many around the world who strongly oppose Abbot’s actions, EPN in conjunction with Health Action International (HAI) – Africa, wrote an open letter to Abbot Shareholders expressing displeasure on this decision and requesting them to urge the company to rescind its decision. The letter was sent to the shareholders on the eve of their annual general meeting scheduled for April 27th 2007.

Following the success of the HIV/AIDS Treatment Literacy Workshop held in January 2006, a second workshop has been organized from 13th - 18th November 2006 in Nairobi, Kenya. Participants are expected from Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Lesotho, Ethiopia and one French speaking country.The aim of the workshop is to equip church leaders as opinion leaders in the community and as owners of health care institutions to understand the issues around HIV/AIDS treatment and the key role they can play. The pastors, priests and other church leaders involved in their church's HIV/AIDS programme who attend the workshop are expected to commit to going back to their communities and actively using the knowledge and skills they gain.

Coordinator’s experience:

This is a summary of the coordinator's experience on the sessions attended on 10th August.

This was the first day of the Ecumenical pre-IADS conference. There were over 500 people in the main hall (ball room). The theme of the conference is “Keep the promise” and this was well kicked off by a powerful opening worship in which stones were used to state our promises. This continued into the closing ceremony when pots were broken to symbolize broken promises and where we threw stones into the pots, breaking them even further, while remembering broken promised make to those who have died or are suffering form HIV/AIDS. Terry Macarthur and the worship team once again did a fantastic job!

Jane Masiga, a member of EPN's board gave a report of her experience in Toronto:

Background

XVI International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2006) which was organised by the International AIDS Society (IAS) and the AIDS 2006 Toronto Local Hosts was held at the Metro Toronto Conventional Centre in Toronto, Canada between 13th and 18th August 2006. The week marked the 25th anniversary of the first reported case of HIV/AIDS. The conference was expected to be the most important global gathering in the fight against the spread of AIDS, as well as a unique opportunity for science, community, government and leadership from around the world to advance the response to the epidemic. It was a forum where timely and important data on the leading HIV/AIDS issues were presented and allowed for sharing of lessons learned among developing and developed countries. This would assist in bringing and supporting effective treatment and prevention programmes to communities around the world.  World-wide, an estimated 38.6 million people are living with HIV/AIDS.

The XVI International AIDS conference was held in Toronto Canada from 13th -18th August 2006. EPN was represented at the conference by the coordinator and a board member.

The coordinator participated in the Ecumenical pre-conference from 10th – 12th as part coordinator for one of the streams and on Monday 14th she was part of a team organized by Bread for the World (BfdW) that ran a skills building workshop on treatment literacy.

Jane Masiga an EPN board member,  also participated in the main conference and presented a paper on Challenges of Scale-up and Local Distribution in the session: “Supplying a Lifeline: Delivering Quality, Affordable Medicines and Supplies to People Living with and Affected by HIV/AIDS.”

Click on the links below to view summaries of their experiences.

The first treatment literacy workshop, which was convened in collaboration with the Ecumenical HIV/AIDS Initiative in Africa (EHAIA), was held in Nairobi, Kenya from 23rd – 27th January 2006. The objective of the workshop was to enhance the knowledge and capacity of church leaders in Africa to deal with HIV/AIDS treatment, related organizational management issues as well as the challenges of making the HIV/AIDS drugs available through the church networks.

After conducting starting points analysis research to gauge the level of understanding of church leaders and Church Health Services (CHSs) to HIV/AIDS treatment literacy, EPN recognized a need to conduct HIV/AIDS treatment literacy workshops for church leaders.

For more information on the workshops, click on the links below:

A feedback meeting was held in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, from 17th–19th July 2005, as part of work to increase the capacity of church leaders and church-related health services to respond to the massive challenge of HIV/AIDS treatment. The results of research undertaken in Burkina Faso in June 2005 to identify starting points was fed back to a group of 45 people from churches, church health services, NGOs, and government organisations.