NAIROBI: There is no lock on the door, no phalanx of guards, no visible impediment to the drugs leaving the glass chamber that the laboratory technicians call a “stability room”. The pills come in little white boxes with labels such as lamivudine, zidovudine and efavirenz, technical names disguising the fact that these tablets are the stuff of life.

Take them together and if you have HIV you can stave off death for years. Millions in Africa have the virus but not the pills. A stone’s throw from the laboratory Aids is wiping out communities, yet these pills cannot leave the stability room.

This is Nairobi, the factory is Kenyan, and a web of influence spun by the world’s pharmaceutical giants encloses its labs, ensuring the Aids drugs stay inside. For Africa, getting them out would be a milestone in controlling the pandemic.

Two things are happening which could untangle the web. Activists are preparing a legal challenge to allow Kenya to make and import generic Aids drugs. And Nairobi’s factories are ramping up their capacity to make their own cheap drugs in expectation of that court victory.

For decades, African companies have produced generic copies of antibiotics and other drugs, paying royalties to those western companies which developed and patented the formulas. Prices tumbled, making them affordable to the poor.

But that has not happened with Aids. The western companies, fearing for profits and market share, have refused permission for generic copies of drugs known as anti-retrovirals (ARVs).

But in the labs of Nairobi manufacturers such as Cosmos they sense change coming. Following World Health Organization guidelines, they have successfully copied branded Aids drugs, registered them with health authorities, printed labels for the boxes and stored them in the stability room. Under international patent law, there they must stay unless the makers obtain a licence.

“There is nothing preventing me mass producing. We have the expertize, the access to raw materials, the registration,” said Prakash Patel, Cosmos’s chairman and managing director. “By the end of the year we will be producing. I think we will be the first to produce ARVs in Africa.”

Dr Patel’s boast reflects swelling confidence that the multinationals will not block African generics. Another Nairobi firm, Laboratory & Allied, also said it could switch to ARVs within weeks.

That optimism stems from a series of victories in recent years which asserted the right of countries facing public health emergencies in the developing world to override intellectual property rights by issuing what is called a compulsory licence to make or import generic drugs.

RICH MANEUVER: Countries such as Britain issue compulsory licences occasionally, giving the UK health service cheaper drugs, but African states have hesitated: the drug giants have friends in Washington and other capitals who can withdraw investment and trade concessions from pity African states.