HIV/AIDS organisations still actively lobbying for lower drug prices

[22 July 2009 - 14h44]

Militants from several international NGOs, led by the French group Act-Up-Paris, held a meeting yesterday in Cape Town as part of the 5th International AIDS Society (IAS) Conference, to protest against the overly high pricing of second and third line treatments for HIV. Along with representatives from Act-Up-Paris, there were representatives from the South African NGO Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), from Médecins sans Frontières, Act-Up Lusaka and the Cameroonian NGO REDS.

Though declared an absolute priority by those fighting to combat the HIV pandemic, universal access to care for patients infected by the virus is far from being a reality. In Africa, which according to the most recent UNAIDS report, accounts for the majority of cases, only 35% of patients involved appear to have access to first-line treatments. And there is no comparison in the percentage of needs being met in terms of second and third line treatments. The latter are, however, becoming unavoidable and essential where resistance is emerging.

Doctors and NGOs are battling to change the situation. The executive director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Michel Kazatchkine, told Destination Santé two days ago that “the price of second and third line medication is between 6 and 40 times higher than that of first-line treatment”.

To condemn this state of affairs, militants and representatives of NGOs marched between the stands of the big laboratories present at the Conference. This was followed by a die-in - a deadly version of the sit-in invented during the American war in Vietnam, the aim being to get the laboratories “as a matter of urgency” to reduce the price of their drugs as well as the cost of measuring viral load – a test essential for monitoring and evaluating the therapy being given.

Paradoxically, they also asked governments to intensify promotion of generic medication. Paradoxically because AIDS specialists know full well that the manufacturers of generic drugs – which generally come from countries with an emerging economy – do not necessarily practice “soft” pricing. Michel Kazatchkine pointed out during the Conference that these generic manufacturers “produce these (second-line) drugs at pharmaceutical company prices. That’s to say at the same price as the original creators. This situation is all the more shocking when one considers that the licences for these generic drugs are granted in very privileged economic conditions to manufacturers who, obviously, have not contributed any investment to research or development.

Source : UNAIDS, July 2009; IAS, 3 July 2009; interview with Michel Kazatchkine, 20 July 2009; from our special correspondents at the 5th ISA Conference, Cape Town, 19-22 July 2009

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