Advocates for survivors of genocide in Rwanda today called for antiretroviral treatment to be made available free to women who were infected with HIV during the systematic rape of tens of thousands in 1994. The Survivors Fund has launched an online petition calling on the British government to do more to pressurise pharmaceutical companies to make antiretroviral treatment affordable in Rwanda. International donors are also being urged to do more to help Rwandan women.
Around 800,000 people died in a civil war in Rwanda in 1994, in which people from the Tutsi ethnic group were systematically murdered by the Hutu ethnic group whilst the United Nations, the United States and the governments of the European Union debated whether to intervene.
Hilary Benn, Secretary of State for International Development, last week announced that his department is to contribute £200,000 towards the cost of providing healthcare in Kigali, including antiretroviral treatment for HIV-positive witnesses at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. On the announcement, he commented: "This will, at last, offer equal treatment with the HIV-positive defendants, who have been getting antiretrovirals from the UN for some time; an inequity that was an affront to any notion of justice."
Welcoming the announcement, Mary Kayetisi Blewitt of the Survivors Fund (SURF) said: “SURF applauds the initiative, which will finally offer some hope to the 25,000 women survivors of the Rwandan genocide. But there are many thousands of survivors who are unable, or have not been called, to serve as witnesses at the tribunal who are also critically at risk of dying of AIDS.”
Lindsey Hilsum, International Editor of Channel 4 News, added: "SURF's initiative is the only hope for these women. If SURF succeeds, not only will the lives of many of these women be prolonged, but they will be able to carry on caring for the orphans of the genocide. If we don't get treatment to them, they will die, one by one. And once again - just as we did in 1994 - we will have watched, and done nothing."
The UK Department for International Development estimates that 40% of children aged 10-14 in Rwanda are orphans already.
According to a study carried out by the Rwandan group Widows of the Genocide earlier this year, which conducted HIV testing in 1200 of the group’s 25,000 members, around two thirds of women raped in 1994 are now HIV-positive, and the group estimates that the annual cost of treatment for these women will amount to $8.4 million (assuming an annual per-head treatment cost of over $1000). However, the Survivors Fund estimates that around 25,000 women are living with HIV in Rwanda and that 8,000 have urgent need of medication.
The Survivors Fund is currently able to support antiretroviral treatment and monitoring for only 22 women, and must pay over £75 ($138) a month for medication and monitoring obtained through the UNAIDS Accelerating Initiative.
"While I would be the first to applaud the companies for bringing down the cost of drugs," said Mary Kayetisi Blewitt, "they are still not affordable for the vast majority of women living in poverty in Rwanda, and while we talk about the price of drugs we must not forget the other costs that we incur - the cost of monitoring for side effects, viral load testing and treatment of drug side-effects."
Ironically, Rwanda could benefit from recently announced deals that will reduce the price of a generically manufactured triple antiretroviral combination to $140 per year per person - when its government eventually reaches agreement with the Global Fund on a Round 3 funding proposal submitted to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS. At present, only 2,700 people are receiving treatment in Rwanda, according to the Clinton Foundation, but it is planned that treatment should be scaled up to reach 19,300 people under the agreement.