Health: HIV

Baroness Tonge Excerpts

Monday 17th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover]

Like the noble Lord opposite, I had an extremely instructive visit to the IAVI lab at Imperial College. He will have noted, as I did, the challenge of trying to find a vaccine for HIV because of the difficulty with the way the virus mutates. This is in contrast, for example, with seeking to find a vaccine for Ebola. We continue to emphasise the need for research in this area, but it is immensely challenging.

[Baroness Tonge (Ind LD)]

My Lords, does my noble friend agree that, when the Global Fund launched its great campaign to get antiretroviral drugs out to AIDS sufferers all over the world, it missed an opportunity to ensure that there were simple primary care health systems set up on the back of the campaign, and people in Africa are suffering from that now?

[Baroness Northover]

The noble Baroness is right in her analysis of what happened in the first instance. Because HIV was such a major catastrophe, it was targeted separately from the health systems. However, the lesson was quickly learned that these needed to be integrated. Our emphasis now is absolutely that this needs to be integrated with the health systems in the relevant countries, and this has benefits across the board.