E-DRUG: Accelerated Access Initiative
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[UNAIDS Press release on the offer of lower-cost
(but still unaffordable?) AIDS drugs. WB]
UNAIDS PRESS RELEASE
Geneva, 11 May 2000
NEW PUBLIC/PRIVATE SECTOR EFFORT INITIATED TO ACCELERATE ACCESS TO HIV/AIDS CARE
AND TREATMENT IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES
Geneva, 11 May 2000 - The Joint United Nations Programme on
HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) announced today that a new dialogue has
begun between five pharmaceutical companies and United Nations
organizations to explore ways to accelerate and improve the
provision of HIV/AIDS-related care and treatment in developing
countries.
The pharmaceutical companies involved - Boehringer Ingelheim,
Bristol-Myers Squibb, Glaxo Wellcome, Merck & Co., Inc., and F.
Hoffmann-La Roche - have indicated their willingness to work with
other stakeholders to find ways to broaden access to care and
treatment, while ensuring rational, affordable, safe and effective use
of drugs for HIV/AIDS related illnesses. The companies are offering,
individually, to improve significantly access to, and availability of, a
range of medicines. Other pharmaceutical companies have also
expressed interest in cooperating in this endeavour.
The companies have responded to calls from UN Secretary General
Kofi Annan inviting the private sector to engage in partnerships for
expanding the global response to HIV/AIDS and to support the
International Partnership against HIV/AIDS in Africa, a collective
international initiative to curtail the spread of HIV and reduce its
impact in African countries.
In recent months, these calls have been reiterated by the heads of
United Nations organizations, in particular by Gro Harlem
Brundtland, Director-General, World Health Organization (WHO),
James Wolfensohn, President, World Bank and Peter Piot,
Executive Director, UNAIDS, whose advocacy efforts have been
fundamental in drawing leading companies into cooperative action
to help meet the challenges of the epidemic. The heads of the
other two organizations involved in the discussions, Carol Bellamy,
Executive Director, United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and
Nafis Sadik, Executive Director, United Nations Population Fund
(UNFPA), have also actively promoted effective alliances with the
business community.
Participants in this cooperative endeavour have adopted a set of
principles that reflect a common vision of how the HIV/AIDS
epidemic can more effectively be tackled in developing countries:
unequivocal and ongoing political commitment by national
governments; strengthened national capacity; engagement of all
sectors of national society and the global community; efficient,
reliable and secure distribution systems; significant additional
funding from national and international sources; and continued
investment in research and development by the pharmaceutical
industry.
Constructive discussions have begun between the five companies
and the United Nations organizations to explore practical and
specific ways of working together more closely to make HIV/AIDS
care and treatment available and affordable to significantly greater
numbers of people in need in developing countries. The intention is
to improve the prevention, treatment and care of HIV-related
illnesses, and the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of
HIV. Activities to promote the development of an HIV vaccine are
being conducted in parallel. This endeavour is expected to expand
to include other partners from all sectors.
A number of recent pilot initiatives aimed at improving access to
HIV-related care have resulted in useful experience being gained in
mobilizing multisectoral action to strengthen health infrastructures
in developing countries. This new endeavour will aim to build on this
experience.
Welcoming the initiation of the discussions, Peter Piot said: "This
is a promising step in a long-term process, and an opportunity for
committed governments, donors, NGOs, people living with
HIV/AIDS, and private industry to enter into discussion to scale up
access to care in ways that respond to the specific needs and
requests of individual countries. Lowering the price of medicines,
however, is only one critical factor in what must become a much
broader and more urgent effort to help people living with HIV and
AIDS lead healthier and more productive lives. We need significant
new funding that is on a level with the enormous human, social and
economic challenges now being posed by the epidemic."
An accelerated response that more adequately addresses the
rights of all people to HIV/AIDS-related services within the broader
context of national development agendas is considered to be an
urgent priority by the United Nations.
These discussions are taking place at a time when there has been
increasing international mobilization to slow the spread of HIV and
alleviate the devastating impact that the AIDS epidemic is having in
many countries, in particular in sub-Saharan Africa. HIV/AIDS
causes more death than any other infectious disease worldwide
and, in the worst affected countries, one in four adults is now
infected.