Global Policy Forum

Six of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies have agreed to make drugs to combat HIV/AIDS more available to developing countries, the U.N. said Thursday. CEOs and senior executives of Abbot Laboratories, Boehringer Ingelheim, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Glaxo Smith Kline, Hoffman-La Roche and Pfizer met in Amsterdam with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to discuss programmes to help HIV/AIDS victims.

The move came as more than 30 international drug firms - including Bristol-Meyers and Roche - have taken South Africa's government to court for its plans to violate international patent law and start manufacturing its own medicines at affordable cost to slow down one of the world's fastest growing HIV infection rates. Cuba last week backed South Africa's plans and is involved in its own pirate production of anti-AIDS medications. In a related development, a study by Harvard University called for a 7-billion-dollar global effort by the U.N. AIDS programme to cover at-cost treatment for the 25 million sub-Saharan HIV-infected people, which represent 70 per cent of the world's AIDS sufferers, the Washington Post reported Thursday.

The study called for immediate treatment of 3 million Africans over the next five years, to set an example for others to submit to testing and start courses of care. Last week, the U.S.-based pharmaceutical maker Merck & Co. said it would cut the price of two of the AIDS and HIV drugs it sells in Africa and other developing regions to one-tenth of what they cost in the United States. On Annan's meeting, a statement issued in New York said the companies have individually made "significant progress in providing an expanded number of drugs to combat AIDS, including antiretrovirals and treatments for opportunistic infections." It said prices of the drugs have come down "substantially". It said the drug companies are aiming their efforts to help the poorest countries, particularly those in Africa, and to continue to negotiate the assistance with developing countries on a country-to- country basis. No cost figures were mentioned in the statement.

The Harvard study said prices could be reduced to 1,100 dollars a year, nearly one- tenth of the 10,000 dollars a year paid by HIV-sufferers in developed countries for similar medicine. Merck said last week it could drop the annual cost of Crixivan from 6,016 dollars in the United States to 600 dollars and of Stocrin from 4,730 in America to 500 dollars. The two drugs are used in combination therapies. Although these prices are still far more than what the poor can afford, they would make it easier for aid agencies and rich countries to buy the drugs for use in eligible countries.

However, treatment requires patients to be under the close supervision of doctors, who must determine the correct mixture of medications, called drug cocktails, for each patient. Such a health network is often lacking in poor countries. That issue was central to critics of the Harvard study, including U.S. Senator Bill Frist, who was quoted as saying that "drugs alone are not enough. Delivery systems, health infrastructures and science- based prevention and treatment programs are necessary if real progress is to be made against this devastating disease".

Frist is seen as the most vocal Senator on the AIDS issue, and was expected to introduce an amendment to President George Bush's budget to increase the 460 million dollars currently funded by Congress. But the amount was likely to fall short of the 1.5 billion dollars the Harvard doctors were pushing for as a contribution to the global U.N. fund.

Apart from lowering drug prices, the companies are involved also in other activities like prevention, education and research of the epidemic. Annan said the fight against HIV/AIDS does not lie only with the pharmaceutical companies. "I am calling for a major mobilisation of political will and significant additional funding to enable a dramatic leap forward in prevention, education, care and treatment," Annan said. The U.N. said there are an estimated 36.1 million people around the world living with HIV or AIDS. Three million of them died last year.

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