Referring to legal actions being taken by the pharmaceutical industry to prevent the production of patented drugs in more affordable generic form, Dr Heiberg said that the public health emergency provisions of the World Trade Organisation framework would be rendered useless if the cases against Brazil and South Africa succeed. Dr Heiberg called on Red Cross and Red Crescent societies worldwide to support countries like South Africa in the search for solutions to this problem. An estimated 150 million people around the world have died from AIDS, TB and malaria since 1945, compared to 23 million from war, the report said. Most of last year's 13 million deaths from infectious disease could have been prevented at the community level at a cost of just five US dollars per person. Facing a high incidence of HIV in Zimbabwe, the Zimbabwe Red Cross Society is now treating the AIDS pandemic as a disaster.
Plans are underway to establish home-based care projects in most of the districts in the country.