Cut-price drugs: A major drug company announced this week in New Jersey, United States, that it would cut the price of its Aids drug Stocrin to less than R10 a day in poor countries that are hardest hit by the pandemic.
Merck & Co said a new 600mg version of the drug, known generically as efavirenz, would be introduced to expand access to HIV treatment in the developing world.
”The price of the once-a-day formulation is 30% below the 200mg version the company had previously produced, which had to be taken three times daily,” the company said.
Seventeen countries have already approved the new tablet and additional approvals are expected this year and next, the company said.
A risk factor: New research shows that the use of methamphetamine is a relatively important risk factor for HIV among men who have sex with men.
The research says ”illegal stimulants have become such a common part of the party circuit and gay club life that some treatment centres have seen a 1 000% increase in people presenting for treatment for methamphetamine abuse.
”With methamphetamine, people become uninhibited, and then it becomes an issue of sexual transmission,” said Michael Gorman, chief investigator of numerous methamphetamine and HIV studies in the US. ”They forget; they don’t put on a condom right or don’t use a condom if they forget to bring one,” he said.
Sources: Reuters, Aids Alert