Cheap drugs offers hope

2003-08-30 17:16

Johannesburg - A landmark agreement on Saturday to allow poor countries access to cheap drugs, coupled with huge increases in aid, will give African governments the means to prolong the lives of tens of millions of people suffering from Aids, malaria and tuberculosis.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, where many people subsist on less than one dollar a day, 30 million people are suffering from Aids, with 2.4 million deaths in 2001, according to UN figures.

Those deaths leave grandparents too frail to work the land looking after little children, and tens of thousands of Aids orphans are caring for themselves.

The pandemic, by weakening immune systems, has led to an upsurge in tuberculosis, and more than one million Africans die from malaria each year - one child every 30 seconds.

Aids has brought the average life expectancy in sub-Saharan Africa down from 62 to 47 years, the United Nations says, and scientists warn that deaths are set to peak 20 years after the disease first emerged.

South Africa, the richest country on the continent, has just ended years of denial and recognised the efficacy of antiretroviral drugs in fighting Aids, but even the Pretoria government is hard put to find the money to treat its five million HIV-positive citizens.

$5 per person a year

Other countries have health budgets which average out to as little as five dollars per citizen per year.

In Geneva, the World Trade Organisation on Saturday approved a deal to to allow poor countries which do not have their own pharmaceutical industries to import cheaper "generic" copies of patented medicines to fight killer diseases.

Generic drugs manufactured in Brazil, India and Thailand cost at most about half the price of patented drugs.

Former Brazilian president Fernando Henrique Cardoso told an Aids conference in Paris last month that Brazil had 600 000 HIV-positive citizens, but that the number of deaths caused by Aids was less than half the tally predicted only a few years ago by international agencies.

Of the many reasons for this success, Cardoso said, one stood out: a government decision to produce eight low-cost generic versions of antiretroviral drugs.

In April 2001, 39 of the world's pharmaceutical giants bowed to heavy pressure and dropped a court bid to stop South Africa importing cheap versions of their brand-name Aids drugs - a decision that had activists dancing and chanting on the benches of the Pretoria High Court.

South Africa is now planning to manufacture its own generic anti-HIV drugs under licence and export the cheaper versions to 13 other southern African countries.

But even the generic drugs are too expensive for most African countries, though diamond-rich Botswana, with a population of 1.7 million, has decided to provide antireroviral therapy to its 330 000 infected citizens.

"We cannot afford (antiretroviral drugs). They would go into millions of dollars per year ... it doesn't matter how much they are reduced," Namibian Health Minister Libertina Amathila declared at an Aids conference in July 2001, speaking for the 14 nations of the Southern African Development Community.

North must assist

UNAids executive director Peter Piot, who attended that meeting in South Africa, said health ministers in western Europe had told him they could not cope if they had to provide antiretroviral drugs to millions of infected citizens.

"The lesson from that is ... without a massive transfer of money from the wealthy North to assist countries in Africa, generally the poorest countries in the world which have the biggest Aids problem, it won't be possible to provide effective good treatment for everybody who needs it," he said.

That help is on the way.

The Global Fund to Fight Aids, tuberculosis and malaria began operations in January 2002 and started disbursing funds last December.

It is an independent entity which distributes grants to governments and frontline organisations, so they can buy drugs, build clinics, train health care workers, or purchase simple but important items such as insecticide-treated mosquito nets.

Total spending during 2002-2004 is likely to be around $4.9bn, an official said.

On top of that, US President George W. Bush has pledged a massive $15bn to fight AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean over the next five years. - Sapa-AFP

- SAPA