MONDAY, 11.00AM
MORE than 150 South African Aids patients were enticed into a drug testing programme run by Swiss pharmaceutical multinational Roche after Johannesburg Aids experts falsely claimed they would receive free drugs for life.
The patients entered an 80-week programme run with Wits University and Johannesburg Hospital which dramatically halted deterioration in their conditions, but their hopes of lifelong treatment were shattered when treatment was stopped in February as Roche prepared to register the drug for market.
Roche claims its contract with 160 South Africans, part of a global group of 3 500 guinea pigs, stated treatment would end when the drug, Saquinavir, became available on the market. At R1 800 a month, the drug is out of the reach of most SA Aids sufferers.
However, John Kalk, deputy chair of Wits’s ethics committee, said there had been a “verbal agreement” with Roche that the treatment would continue on the test patients until it was no longer useful. Roche has dismissed this claim.