This is a translation into French by Françoise Railhet of the “Debate on HIV and infant feeding” between Claudio Schuftan and I and Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Health of Rwanda, Dr. Agnès Binagwaho, regarding whether donors ought to provide free infant formula for HIV-exposed infants in Rwanda. Click here to open the file. Here you can access the original in English, which in turn includes a link to the previous inputs into the debate.

Dr. Claudio Schuftan asked me to join him in responding to something of an attack on him by the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Health of Rwanda, Dr. Agnès Binagwaho. This took place in an Open Forum on Health and Human Rights run by a Harvard University group.

Dr. Binagwaho argues that the wealthy countries have a responsibility to provide free infant formula to HIV-infected mothers in poor countries. In fact, UNICEF attempted to do this for several years. Read here why they decided to stop.

By clicking here you can see what we wrote and on that page you can access the earlier portions of the debate.

Occasionally one gets to be involved in a research project that makes a real breakthrough, likely to be important for public health for a long time to come. This was the case regarding this study. As the conclusions in the abstract say, “Supervised, standardized salt iodation procedures adapted to local circumstances can yield homogeneous iodine levels within the required range, overcoming a major obstacle to universal salt iodation.” This careful research showed that it is possible to achieve a reasonably good level of iodation under the low-tech production conditions illlustrated in the photo above. Click here to open the full-text pdf.