SUE THOMAS, Pretoria | Tuesday
TIME is running out for Thanduxolo Doro, one of more than 2_000 people who paraded through Pretoria to protest a court action by 39 international drug companies trying to prevent South Africa’s government from hunting down the cheapest Aids drugs it can find.
Doro, who looks much older than his 36 years, needs drugs urgently to keep Aids at bay after carrying the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) for 10 years.
“The court case is something that could have been avoided if the pharmaceutical companies were really in touch with what is happening on the ground,” Doro said when the crowd stopped outside the United States embassy.
“People are dying and these drugs are lifesavers. If we could get drugs at a cheaper price, we could save many people,” he said.
The protesters carried posters condemning the pharmaceutical companies and a coffin with a 16-year-old Aids victim inside.
South African Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang was among activists, industry representatives, Aids sufferers and journalists who crammed into the Pretoria courtroom at the start of a week-long hearing seen as a test case for the continent.
Her department is defending a law that would allow her to declare the Aids epidemic a national emergency and bypass international patent standards to import generic and substitute Aids drugs from the cheapest source available.
Pharmaceutical companies fear that if South Africa’s government wins the right to buy the cheapest drugs on offer other African nations could follow its lead.
“I can’t afford the drugs. If we win the court case it would mean that South Africa would be able to import generic drugs. It would make them as cheap as in Brazil, India and Thailand,” Doro said.
“Here it costs R4 000 a month and I can’t afford that,” he said, adding that after 10 years with HIV in his body his life expectancy without drugs was short.
Estimates of the actual cost of Aids treatment vary, but Ellen ‘tHoen of Medecins Sans Frontieres says a year’s supply of the currently favoured cocktail of three drugs costs about $3_500 wholesale and about $5_000 retail.
If the South African government wins the court case, the health minister would be allowed to begin a process that could see substitute drugs imported from India at a cost as low as $350 a year. – Reuters
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