Research and Development of Anti-Retroviral Drugs Essay

‘Discuss the reasons why the research and development of anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs) has impacted differently on people suffering from HIV/AIDS in developed and developing world’ HIV/AIDS still does not have a know cure, but has a treatment that slows down the affects of HIV/AIDS which is called ARV (anti-retroviral drug) The ARV drug is a very â€Å"exclusive† drug because as it is very expensive, around $400 a month if not more depending on which stage you are in, and that is a huge dilemma because many people cannot afford to pay that amount of money so they are not able to receive the treatment. If people in the first world countries cannot receive the drug, how do people in the third world receive the drug? In third world countries the drugs are given to them for free, but on the 47% gets the full treatment. The drugs are given to them by of the drug company itself of other companies that buy the ARVs from the company and send it to the place where it is needed, for example Africa. Africa is the location where the most HIV/AIDS cases are, and is also the one getting the least amount of treatment. The reason for this is because the ARV drug company wants to get their money back for all the research they put in, so giving the ARVs for free would become a great loss economically for them. The first aspect of this issue is the social part. Infrastructure is a big problem because as buildings coast a lot to construct they are not able to put up many, and you must also have trained people able to work there, which are hard to find in Africa. There are very few amount of places where you can go get tested but they have a limited amount of treatments and supplies. This is a huge problem because if people go to get better they have to wait or not get better at all due to the lack of resources. I would solve this issue by having not many small structures but several big structures so the supplies have a greater chance to arrive and more money is used wiser and more efficiently. Another social aspect of this problem is the education. In Africa the education is something that not everyon e gets, so they are not aware about how they get the disease, how they can prevent it or what are  the affects. A reason for why in Africa they do not receive the education is because there are a very few amount of teachers, and the teachers that they have may also be contaminated and are not able to execute their job correctly. HIV/AIDS affects everyone in their community because the disease spreads fast in their case (the people in Africa). This is due to their sexual behavior. Their culture does not have monogamy or a custom of only one sexual partner, but they have many different sexual partners, and that is why HIV/AIDS spreads so quickly in Africa. They also do not use protection because it is not available to most people and so chances are higher to get HIV/AIDS. Another cultural aspect is that there is a lot of prejudice against testing. Many people do not want to get tested for HIV/AIDS because one, they are scared the test might come back positive, second if it does result positive how will they tell their family/friends and thirdly how will they get the treatment they need to get. If the people get tested and do want to not tell anyone, because of various reasons, and as a result the problem amplifies and does not get solved. Another problem for the cultural aspect is get the people to take responsibility and try to change. Of coarse it is easier to ignore the problem and pretend it is not there, but that would not be helping the matter, it would be making it worse. How to solve these problems would be, in my opinion, have protection available to them, encourage testing, reassure the people that there will be a treatment for them, make them understand the severity of this issue and that if we do not take action it may get a lot worse, have session/groups for them to talk about their worries, experience ect. However before doing this we must solve the bigger problem, how do we give them the treatment for free. Another aspect of the issue is the ethical/moral part. The richer countries to some extent have an obligation to help the poorer countries, but the third world countries should not relay or take advantage because also the richer countries have their own problems to solve. For insists America is going though a very tough crisis but at the same time they are helping the less fortunate get better. The poorer countries should also take action and do something to help themselves, because they should be putting the money where it really needs to go to, the people. This leads us to another aspect of the issue, the political portion. Politics have caused a lot of mayhems in the world because they sometimes do not have they  priorities sorted out. For example in Africa instead of investing their money in this issue of HIV/AIDS and the treatments, they have decided to invest their money on weapons and in their natural recourses such as oil. It is very hard to run a third world country but it should not be an excuse. To solve these concerns although it is a difficult task but one way to solve them, in my opinion, is to have people from the first world talk and discuss about what they can do together (with the people of the third world) instead of just have the first world do everything on their own. The last aspect of this issue is the economic part. Africa is already a poor continent, having a poor economy is not helping either. They do not have enough money to circulate and this stops Africa growing, having sick people also stops the economy from growing because it is another matter they have to face. Child labor increases due to the fact that the adults are sick and are unable to work and the poor people have no way in getting better because there aren’t enough doctors. In conclusion a way to resolve the problem in the distribution of the ARVs is to have several multi-national pharmaceutical companies sponsor the ARVs, so other independent companies do not have to buy the drug and then distribute them, but by sponsoring the drug, the ARV drug company directly gives the drug to the third world countries without loosing it’s money. The multi-national pharmaceutical companies get advertisement and so they also gaining not loosing their money. As you can see this is a win, win situation. The main issue here is that the ARV drug company does not want to loose the money that they put in research so they make the drug excessively high-priced because to produce the drug is a coast next to nothing. Once the people receive the treatment, they should help educate not only the affected people but also the people that haven’t been affected yet. I believe by doing this, the transmission of the HIV/AIDS with decrease significantly and things will start to get better. I do believe that this problem is solvable.