Reuters Health
November 30, 2000
Westport, US (Reuters) - Representatives from several AIDS advocacy groups emphasised the need in a media briefing on Tuesday for affordable antiretroviral therapies in poor countries battling AIDS. A status report of the price reduction initiatives proposed at the International AIDS Conference in Durban, South Africa, in July was also given.
Anne Valerie Kaninda, a medical advisor for the advocacy group Doctors Without Borders, said that strategies for controlling AIDS "based on prevention only, often fail".
AIDS prevention in Uganda has been termed a success, but still "over 10% of the adult population is infected," she said.
"Treatment enhances prevention," Kaninda emphasised. "Why would you get tested if a positive result was only a death sentence?"
By making antiretroviral therapies available, "patients have hope and a reason to get tested in the first place." Despite promotional claims, Kaninda believes that the major pharmaceutical companies "have not done enough" to reduce antiretroviral drug prices in poor countries.
"If we look at countries that have negotiated a price reduction, there's only one - Senegal," she pointed out. "Doctors Without Borders is challenging the pharmaceutical companies to make a 95% reduction in drug prices for people living in poor countries by the first week of 2001," Kaninda said.
Mark Heywood, a representative from the AIDS activist group Treatment Action Campaign, added that "the price reductions by the major pharmaceutical companies should be unconditional and should be announced immediately. We do not support the idea that these reductions should be negotiated on a country-by-country basis.
"We find it rather sad, in a country like South Africa, [that] Glaxo-Wellcome, which has 37% of the world market in antiretroviral drugs, is closing down possibly the most modern pharmaceutical manufacturing plant in Africa by 2003," Heywood stated.
"As far as we're concerned, actions like that contradict the [public relations] exercises that are currently being engaged in around the yet-to-be-felt price reductions."
Antiretroviral "drugs can be made available - from experience based on access to generics - for a deep, deep discount," according to Asia Russell, a member of the Health GAP Coalition, a domestic policy group.
This is "what drives the demands coming from the activists in the public health community," she said. "There is no proof . . . that these price reductions will be sufficient to address the overwhelming crisis and lack of access to medication," Russell continued.
Access to generic equivalents is also important, and the US government needs to promote this, she concluded.