E-DRUG: Nigeria USD 4m ARV programme
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[some more data on Nigeria's ARV programme. At a price of
USD 266 per year it looks like good value. Copied as fair use.
NN]
Nigeria kicks off Africa's largest treatment program - but drugs still
unavailable
By GLENN McKENZIE
09/07/2001
Associated Press Newswires
ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) - Nigeria officially launched what it billed as Africa's
most ambitious AIDS treatment program Friday - although health officials
admitted they hadn't received deliveries of any of the cheap generic drugs
yet.
Health Minister Alphonsus Nwosu told journalists the dlrs 4 million program
would provide treatment for 15,000 people infected with HIV, the virus that
causes AIDS.
Nigeria now offers virtually no treatment for the country's 2.6 million
people
who are known to be infected with HIV.
The government's treatment plan was originally scheduled to kick off Sept.
1.
But officials were still developing a system to administer and control the
drugs, Nwosu told journalists, saying he didn't want to give a new deadline
for
the actual start of treatment.
"I would rather have the program right and the deadline wrong than vice
versa,"
he said.
Authorities are determined to weed out fraudulent HIV claims from Nigeria's
notorious crime rings which, Nwosu said, were already trying to get on the
list
of patients in order to obtain and resell the sought-after drugs on the
black
market.
Advocacy groups representing those with HIV were aggressively lobbying
Nigeria's
government to distribute the drugs through the groups.
Nwosu said the AIDS groups would be "integrally involved" in the
distribution
process.
In Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation with 120 million people, hospitals
are
run down and medical care is too expensive for most patients.
Sophisticated-looking, fly-by-night "clinics" offering "miracle" and
traditional
remedies have sprung up around the country to treat patients desperately
seeking
a cure.
The program would provide cheap drugs to just a tiny fraction of those
infected
- 10,000 adults and 5,000 children. Some patients would be put on a six-drug
regime while others would receive a two-drug regime.
The Health Minister, whose sister died from AIDS, posed for photographers
alongside AIDS patients holding samples of lamivudine and nevirapine, two
anti-AIDS drugs made by Indian pharmaceutical company Ranbaxy Laboratories.
Ranbaxy was among the companies being considered to provide AIDS drugs to
the
program. Cipla, another Indian firm, already has a contract to sell a
three-drug
AIDS cocktail for dlrs 350 a year per patient. Patients will pay about a
third
of that - about dlrs 120 (dlrs 10 a month) while the government will pick up
the
rest of the tab, Nwosu said.
"There are 2.6 million of my brothers and sisters to be provided for. How do
you
choose? It is going to be incredibly difficult but at least I will know at
the
end of the day that ... needy persons are being treated," he said.
The plan is the largest of its kind in Africa, according to Stephen Lewis,
special envoy of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan for HIV/AIDS in Africa.
Botswana, a tiny southern African nation with a population of only 1.6
million,
has the world's highest known rate of AIDS infections. It will launch a
treatment program using anti-AIDS drugs in early 2002.
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