Estimated worldwide HIV infections: 49 115 775 at 10.22am on Thursday October 24
Cut-price drugs: A major drug company announced this week in New Jersey, United States, that it would cut the price of its Aids drug Stocrin to less than R10 a day in poor countries that are hardest hit by the pandemic.
Merck & Co said a new 600mg version of the drug, known generically as efavirenz, would be introduced to expand access to HIV treatment in the developing world.
”The price of the once-a-day formulation is 30% below the 200mg version the company had previously produced, which had to be taken three times daily,” the company said.
Seventeen countries have already approved the new tablet and additional approvals are expected this year and next, the company said.
A risk factor: New research shows that the use of methamphetamine is a relatively important risk factor for HIV among men who have sex with men.
The research says ”illegal stimulants have become such a common part of the party circuit and gay club life that some treatment centres have seen a 1 000% increase in people presenting for treatment for methamphetamine abuse.
”With methamphetamine, people become uninhibited, and then it becomes an issue of sexual transmission,” said Michael Gorman, chief investigator of numerous methamphetamine and HIV studies in the US. ”They forget; they don’t put on a condom right or don’t use a condom if they forget to bring one,” he said.
Sources: Reuters, Aids Alert
Estimated worldwide HIV infections: 49 015 279 at 10.53am on Thursday October 17
Drug trafficking: The head of Africa Helps Africa (AHA), a humanitarian organisation in Senegal, was dismissed this week after the country’s president accused him of committing ”extremely serious errors”. Latif Gueye is accused by President Abdoulaye Wade of trafficking Aids drugs that were meant for Africa, but were redirected to Europe to be sold at a higher price. AHA is an intergovernmental organisation that Wade founded in 1996. It has 51 member countries. Some of the drugs were found in Germany and The Netherlands. Gueye denied any involvement in trafficking. ”AHA had a surplus of anti-retroviral drugs and had tried to exchange them for other medicine and equipment,” he said.
Generic nevirapine: Aspen Pharmacare in Port Elizabeth signed a deal with Boehringer Ingeleheim this week granting Aspen an exclusive voluntary licence to manufacture a generic version of nevirapine. Boehringer holds the patent on nevirapine. The deal stipulates that the generic drug can only be sold to the state or to non-profit organisations. Aspen may also distribute the generic nevirapine in 13 other Southern African Development Community countries. The generic drug will probably only be on the market in June next year because it must first be registered with the Medicines Control Council. Aspen said the generic would be competitively priced.
Source: Sapa-AP, Associated Press
Estimated worldwide HIV infections: 48 916 879 at 2.52pm on Thursday October 10
Rapid testing: A new rapid HIV-testing kit has been launched in Kenya. The Rapid HIV Infection Diagnosis System test provides results in 30 seconds. HIV tests that are now used in Kenya take several days to produce results.
”The test is accurate and has met requirements set by the World Health Organisation,” said Ernest Mureithi, executive director of IntegriHealth, which introduced the kit.
”The test is ideal for use in rural areas because it can be exposed to various temperature conditions.”
The test kits will be sold to hospitals and other health institutions.
Monopoly breaker: Thailand’s state drugs agency said this week it would seek court permission to make an Aids drug, Didanosine, patented by Bristol-Myers Squibb. The company was stripped of its exclusive rights to sell the drug last week.
The Government Pharmaceutical Organisation said it would seek temporary court immunity to produce the drug for patients who could not afford current market prices for the drug.
Last week, Thailand’s Central Intellectual Property and International Trade Court ruled that Bristol-Myers should not have the exclusive rights to sell the tablets in Thailand. Bristol-Myers has a month to appeal the ruling.
More than 70000 people in Thailand are infected with HIV.
Source: Reuters, Kenyan Nation-AllAfrica.com
Estimated worldwide HIV infections: 48 815 703 at 2.14pm on Thursday October 3
Illegal sales: Aids drugs supplied to Africa at cut rates have been illegally resold in Europe, threatening to undermine a system of preferential medicine pricing for poor countries, GlaxoSmithKline said on Thursday.
The Dutch government has recalled a quantity of the company’s Combivir and Epivir Aids drugs after uncovering the resale of more than 35 000 packets of pills with a market value of close to 15-million euros(about R153-million) in The Netherlands and Germany.
The incident highlights the difficulty of preventing pharmaceuticals from flowing back into lucrative Western markets, an illegal trade that drug-makers claim would jeopardise future research into new medicines.
Partnership: A R2,4-million grant to the universities of Natal and the Transkei will boost research into the link between post-delivery morbidity and HIV/Aids, a pharmaceutical company said on Wednesday.
The grant is part of the Secure the Future programme run by Bristol-Myers Squibb. The company has committed $115-million to finding solutions to HIV/Aids in sub-Saharan Africa.
The money was handed over at a function in Durban this week. It will be used to measure the role of certain types of antibiotics in reducing the prevalence of post-delivery morbidity in HIV-positive and HIV-negative women.
The study will be conducted at the King Edward VIII hospital in Durban and at the Umtata hospital.
Source: Reuters