December 2, 2003	Tuesday	Shawwal 7, 1424

NAIROBI, Dec 1: The international medical charity Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF — MSF Doctors without Borders), on Monday — World AIDS Day — announced that an Indian drug manufacturer had slashed by half the cost of one of the most effective treatments used to fight AIDS.

“Cipla this morning offered to MSF and other organisations a three-in-one combination for 140 dollars per patient per year,” MSF spokesman Weger Wentholt told AFP by phone.

Previously Cipla sold the preparation, Triomune, which combines three generic antiretroviral drugs into a single pill taken twice a day for about 280 dollars per person per year.

Antiretroviral drugs prevent the onset of full-blown AIDS in people infected with HIV and make such infections managable.

For lack of such drugs, three million people died in 2003.

The equivalent patented drugs — only available in three separate pills — cost about 700 dollars per patient per year.

On Sunday, the Indian government said it had struck the same deal with Indian drug manufacturers to treat people in India.

The same price had already been reached by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to treat people in a select number of countries in the Caribbean and Africa.

The deal announced on Monday, however, is not restricted to a specific list of countries and according to MSF, will benefit hundreds of thousands of people in the short term and will do much to help the realisation of the UN ambition to treat three million people living with HIV by 2005 (“3-by-5”).

More so as the WHO announced on Monday, also in Nairobi, that it had “prequalified” three versions of the three-in-one therapy, an approval that makes it easier for developing countries to endorse their use.

A similar preparation is manufactured by another Indian pharmaceutical company, Ranbaxy.

“This is important because these pills are the best available source of treatment,” said Wendtholt.

“It’s better because it is far cheaper than any triple-therapy available and because these three-in-one pills are easier to administer which means the chances are greater that patients will stick to regimen, thereby lowering the risk of creating resistance,” he added.

The spokesman added a caveat: “The biggest obstacle is the financing of the whole programme. There has to be more money forthcoming from the international community to make 3-by-5 a reality,” he added.

Also, complex provisions of an August World Trade Organisation agreement on generic drugs means companies holding the patents to molecules copied by generic manufacturers such as Cipla have the power to impede the distribution of the “copycat” pills.

“Anyone who wanted to delay or obstruct in one way or another has a lot of ways of doing that,” said Wendholt.—AFP