IRIN, City | day
NIGERIA plans to launch the largest Aids treatment program in Africa using cheap generic drugs on 1 September, AP reported on Tuesday.
Stephen Lewis, the special envoy of Secretary-General Kofi Annan for HIV/Aids in Africa told a press conference on Monday that the Nigerian government’s commitment demonstrates that efforts are under way within Africa to tackle the epidemic that has infected about 26,5 million people across the continent.
He told journalists that “it’s a quite extraordinary intervention, a measure of the president’s determination that they maintain the level of the pandemic where it is and try to turn it back, They recognize that if Nigeria fails, then much of Africa will fail.”
Botswana, which has the world’s highest rate of Aids infections, will launch a treatment program using anti-retroviral drugs in early 2002. In February, the Indian pharmaceutical company Cipla, offered to sell a three-drug Aids cocktail to non-profit agencies for US$350 a year per African patient provided the patients weren’t charged. The company said at the time that African governments could purchase the same drugs for $600 per patient.
But the Nigerian health minister was able to negotiate a $350 a year per patient deal with Cipla.
The Nigerian government will subsidize about 80 percent of the cost, but patients who receive treatment will have to pay about US $7 – US $8 a month (1,000 naira), said Lewis. Nigeria intends to use a six-drug regimen for 60% of the patients and a two-drug regimen for the other 40%, he said. The drugs are expected to have similar results, but the government will monitor and evaluate how patients cope with the different programs, which will be administered by Nigeria’s teaching hospitals. – IRIN
ZA*NOW:
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