MARIE SANZ, Havana | Wednesday
CUBAN President Fidel Castro and his South African counterpart Thabo Mbeki have signed a series of agreements – one of which could clear the way for the two countries to cooperate in producing low-cost Aids drugs while ignoring drug company patents.
Both sides are interested in developing low-cost alternatives to the expensive drugs used to treat HIV, the virus which causes Aids, a Cuban government source said.
The price of such drugs places them out of reach of many developing countries.
“We are very interested in the question of affordable drugs and medicines,” Mbeki said after his meeting with Castro. “The matter is critical to the provision of sufficient and adequate health care to our people.”
He refused to disclose details of how Cuba and South Africa might cooperate in developing and producing drugs.
Last week, Castro touted Cuba’s development of world-class Aids drugs and offered to help Brazil and South Africa ignore drug company patents and produce the medicines.
South Africa faces an Aids epidemic with some 4.7 million South Africans – one in nine – infected with HIV, according to a government study.
The South African government is waging a landmark court battle with 39 large pharmaceutical countries to facilitate access to cheap medicine.
Meanwhile, Abbott Laboratories announced that it would join Merck and Bristol-Myers Squibb in slashing the price of its anti-Aids drugs for African consumption.
The Illinois-based company said it would offer its two anti-retroviral medications to treat HIV infection, Kaletra (lopinavir/ritonavir) and Norvir (ritonavir), in Africa at cost.
Abbott’s announcement came as health ministers from the Non-Aligned Movement adopted a declaration stating that poor countries had a right to resort to special measures to source cheap medicines, including treatment for people living with HIV/Aids.
Some 70 percent of the world’s 36.1 million HIV or Aids cases are in sub-Saharan Africa, according to World Health Organization (WHO) figures. – AFP
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