OWN CORRESPONDENTS, Johannesburg | Tuesday
INDIA, Swaziland and Lesotho on Monday demanded a special deal on Aids treatment for developing countries at the 24th Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) meeting of health ministers.
Aids is like an earthquake where everyday people die. We need to obtain affordable medicine for our countries, Indian Health Minister Chandreswar Parard Thakur told journalists at a media briefing.
The minister proposed that a donor fund be created from which developing countries could draw to pay for Aids treatment. “There should be an international pool of funds,” he said.
Thakur also proposed that NAM countries form pressure groups to persuade pharmaceutical companies to lower the prices and to enable them to negotiate specific deals for poor regions, such as the 14-nation Southern African Development Community (SADC).
“They can order in bulk as SADC. That would bring prices down. They should act as a block. Countries working alone do not have enough clout,” he said.
All 33 NAM countries attending the two-day meeting supported the South African government in its landmark court battle against 39 pharmaceutical companies that began in Pretoria this month, he added.
The companies are trying to block a law that will allow the government to import and produce cheap versions of brand-name drugs, saying this will compromise intellectual property rights and the viability of the whole industry.
“All [NAM] members are unanimous that essential drugs should be kept out of restrictive legislation. We rally behind this country.”
His counterpart from Botswana, Joy Phumaphi, accused pharmaceutical companies of “deliberately keeping [medicines] away from the people it is meant to assist.”
India has the second highest number of people with HIV, with between three to five million people infected. It is estimated that in Botswana 18 to 20% of the population carry the virus.
But Thakur and Phumaphi said despite offers of cheaper drugs from companies like Indian manufacturer Cipla they could not afford to provide anti-retrovirals on public health and were only implementing programmes to prevent mother-to-child transmission of the disease.
Swaziland Health Minister Patsile Dlamini said even if the drugs were handed out for free, it would cost poor countries money to distribute them and to provide patients taking the treatment with food.
The 20 ministers attending the meeting are expected to draft a common strategy in the search for cheaper drugs by the time the conference closes on Tuesday. – AFP
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