SIX Central American countries made strides in their fight against HIV/Aids by reaching an agreement with five of the world’s leading pharmaceutical manufacturers to slash prices on antiretroviral medications.
The health ministers of Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama and executives representing the transnational laboratories announced in Panama late Wednesday that the prices of 14 HIV/Aids drugs would be cut by around 50 percent.
”The reduction of antiretroviral prices in Central America is a landmark in the history of this epidemic, both for the regional response and the global context,” said Fernando Gracia, Panama’s health minister.
Under the accord, there will be a 30 to 83 percent price cuts for 14 antiretrovirals — the anti-Aids ”cocktails” — produced by F. Hoffman-La Roche, Boehringer-Ingelheim, Merck Sharp & Dohme, GlaxoSmithKline and Bristol-Myers Squibb.
The savings represented by the reduced prices will allow the number of people receiving treatment for HIV/Aids in the region to double, noted Gracia.
For their part of the deal, the six Central American governments have committed to expand health coverage with the aim of providing complete medical care for people with HIV/Aids.
They also pledged to establish mechanisms to prevent the preferentially priced drugs from being smuggled for sale outside the region.
Human rights and health activists applaud the pact, which is aimed at benefiting one of the world’s poorest regions.
According to official figures, there are 180,000 people with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), and 16,000 with full-blown AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) in Central America, which has a total population of 36 million.
Antiretroviral medications do not cure HIV/Aids, but they do reduce the presence of the virus and allow those infected to enjoy a higher quality of life.
These drugs serve two functions: prevent the virus from replicating and prevent it from infecting can reduce his or her viral burden, or the number if HIV units per millilitre of blood. And this can allow an improvement in the organism’s immune defences and thus an improvement in overall health.
Antiretroviral therapy on the isthmus currently costs as much as 2,800 dollars annually per patient.
”The deal is good news,” activist Guillermo Murillo told IPS. ”But there are still many problems that must be resolved because the medications continue to be very expensive,” he said.
Murillo, who is HIV-positive and assistant director of the non-governmental organisation Agua Buena, was referring to the prices of generic antiretroviral drugs, which are made with the same active agents but cost less than trademarked medications produced
by the major laboratories.
Governments should try to import the generic versions of the antiretrovirals, says Murillo, whose organisation promotes broader access to HIV/AIDS drugs in Central America.
In this region, ”the countries that most worry us are Belize and Nicaragua, where the governments do not provide even aspirin to people with AIDS,” he said.
Belize did not participate in the talks, recommended by the Ibero-American Summit of heads of government in May 2002, because it is involved in similar negotiations within the Caribbean Community (CARICOM).
According to the Central American agreement, GlaxoSmithKline will offer price cuts of 50 to 83 percent, Roche up to 47 percent, and Boehringer from 33 to 38 percent, in addition to donating medications for pregnant women to prevent infection of their children.
Furthermore, Glaxo, Boehringer and Roche will establish fixed reference prices that will allow the nations of the region to integrate their standards for HIV/Aids treatment and to make joint purchases, providing the benefits of economy of scale.
”This is excellent news,” Aids activists Verónica Vega told IPS. ”It is wrong that people continue to die when solutions are available. You shouldn’t have to die just because you are poor.”
Vega noted that at last a group of developing countries had joined forces and convinced transnational drug makers to reduce their prices.
According to the Aids Epidemic Update 2002, published by UNAIDS (Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/Aids), the disease is well established in Latin America and the Caribbean, and there is the danger that it could spread rapidly due to the lack of effective public health responses to the epidemic.
The report states that by late 2001, there were 1.9 million people in the region with HIV, but just 170,000 were receiving medical treatment.
In some Latin American countries, the prevalence of HIV among pregnant women is one percent or higher.
”Among the factors helping drive the spread of HIV in the region overall is a combination of unequal socio-economic development and high population mobility,” says the UNAids report.
(IPS)