E-DRUG: SA Parliament, Mandela on access to AIDS drugs
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[A sample of South African newspaper articles, all published within
24 hours. The coverage shows the widespread interest in getting
better access to HIV-related and other essential drugs. Copied as
fair use. WB]
PARLIAMENT May 16 - NEGOTIATE ON AIDS DRUGS, MPs TOLD
A team of experts from South Africa and other African countries
should be set up to negotiate directly with the companies that last
week offered lower Aids drug prices, MPs were told on Tuesday.
These governments should not use the United Nations as a
mediator, as envisaged in last week's agreement between UNAids
and five international pharmaceutical giants, said the head of the
Aids Law Project, Mark Heywood. The disease should be dealt
with as an African problem, he told the health portfolio committee's
hearings on Aids. If the companies did not fall into line, President
Thabo Mbeki should use South Africa's moral legitimacy to
challenge pricing policies and practices that put millions of people
outside the loop of affordable treatment. The agreement - which, it
was reported, could cut prices by up to 80 percent - followed
claims that the companies were profiteering from the pandemic.
Heywood said that in the face of a crisis of this magnitude, drug
companies had to say what their
actual costs and legitimate profits were. A time frame should be
set for these talks, and, if they failed, government should act on its
constitutional responsibility to ensure the health of its people by
introducing compulsory licensing of essential drugs. He said Aids
lobbyists were challenging not just companies' intellectual property
rights, but the way they used those rights in setting prices. It was
very difficult to engage in a debate on improving access to drugs
when your partner in the debate would not reveal costs of research
and development, or active ingredients. "So governments and
communities end up negotiating with a blindfold... there's no
frankness, there's not a preparedness to engage." He
acknowledged that commercial considerations were involved.
However, these products were not jeans or hamburgers, but
essential lifesaving medicines that could have a vital impact.
Chief executive of the South African Pharmaceutical Manufacturers'
Association, Mirryena Deeb, said the agreement would mean more
than a general slashing of the prices of Aids drugs. Though details
were still being worked out, consideration would also be given to
donations for very poor countries, and preferential pricing for those
that could afford it. "Clearly countries that can make some
contribution will be expected to make that contribution," she said.
Although only one company had so far announced it would actually
drop prices, the general understanding was that others would
follow. Countries that wanted to use antiretrovirals would enter
negotiations with individual companies, with the UN as facilitator.
She said anti-trust laws meant no two companies were allowed to
sit in the same room and discuss prices. What the industry had
essentially done was to take away the "commodity nature" of
treatment for HIV/Aids in the developing world. She hoped the
agreement would be accepted as a genuine effort to end the
pandemic.
Sapa News release 16 May
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State urged to secure anti-HIV drugs
By Di Caelers (Cape Argus, May 17 2000)
Costly anti-HIV drugs are still top of the agenda in parliament's
health committee, with a call on the government to move quickly on
negotiations with drug companies to secure cheap medication, or
use its legal muscle to supply generics.
The Aids Law Project, which won a landmark court case against
South African Airways last week on behalf of a job-seeker who was
excluded because he was HIV-positive, told the committee on
Tuesday that a tight timeframe for talks must be set.
The project's Mark Heywood was reacting to last week's
announcement that Merck, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Glaxo Wellcome,
Boehringer Ingelheim and Roche, the world's five pharmaceutical
giants, had committed themselves to slashing prices of HIV drugs
sold to poor countries.
Heywood said South Africa and other African countries should
immediately put together an expert team to negotiate directly with
the companies.
But he warned that governments and communities could not
"negotiate with a blindfold". Companies had to openly discuss
costs and the question of legitimate profits.
If this could not be achieved within a set timeframe, the government
must "use its power" to secure anti-HIV drugs, either by licensing
local manufacturers to make cheaper generic copies or by sourcing
the drugs from a third country where they were manufactured more
cheaply, in defiance of the drug company's patent rights here.
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Mandela supports Mbeki on HIV debate
Former president Nelson Mandela on Tuesday expressed support
for President Thabo Mbeki's views on the HIV/Aids debate, SABC
television news reported.
Speaking to students in New York, Mandela said Mbeki had done
his homework before going public and had even called for a
cheaper Aids drug.
In April, the Washington Post published a letter written by Mbeki in
which he commented on the "orchestrated campaign of
condemnation" of people who held alternate views on HIV/Aids.
Mbeki also defended dissident scientists who had theories that HIV
did not cause Aids and that anti-retroviral drugs AZT and Nevirapine
did more harm than good.
Mbeki insisted on his government's right to consult dissident
scientists and accused unnamed foreign critics of waging a
"campaign of intellectual intimidation and terrorism" akin to "the
racist apartheid tyranny we opposed".
In the letter, sent to United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan
among others, Mbeki said "it would constitute a criminal betrayal of
our responsibility to our own people" to mimic foreign approaches
to treating Aids.
Sapa News release
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Gazi to go ahead with Aids drug plan
[Dr Costa Gazi is a medical doctor working in an Eastern Cape
hospital but also health spokesperson for the Pan Africanist
Congress, a left-wing opposition party to ANC; WB]
Eastern Cape public health doctor Costa Gazi says he will press
on with his plan to provide free Aids drugs to pregnant woman,
despite opposition from the provincial health department.
Gazi, who confirmed on Tuesday that he had made good on his
promise earlier this year to buy a stock of the drug Nevirapine
using his own salary, said he would begin the programme at a
Mdantsane clinic next month.
Nevirapine helps prevent transmission of HIV from infected mothers
to their infants during birth, but is not offered in government clinics
and hospitals.
Gazi, who is head of public health at Cecilia Makiwane Hospital in
Mdantsane, said after attending parliamentary hearings on Aids in
Cape Town that provincial health authorities had told him it was not
government policy to make the drug available.
They had also said he could not dispense a drug not on the official
essential drugs list, and had demanded he submit a proposal
before beginning anything.
Gazi said he would submit the proposal, but would at the same
time go ahead with the Nevirapine programme anyway.
"If they won't let me do it in the clinics, I'll do it at the gate of the
clinics," he said.
He said he had already bought R1 500 of the drug at a 25 percent
discount from an East London pharmacy, and hoped to get an even
bigger discount from the manufacturers in future.
All except R150 of the money had been his own. He was planning
to set out a trust fund to collect more donations, as there were a
few people willing to back the project.
The head of the obstetrics department at the Cecilia Makiwane
hospital, where most of the mothers in his district delivered their
babies, had agreed to administer the drug, while the hospital
pharmacy had agreed to store and issue it.
The Youth Academy, a non-government organisation of
unemployed matriculants doing development work in East London's
townships, had agreed to be involved.
"So it's going to be very straightforward," he said.
He would begin the programme at one clinic, probably in
Mdantsane's Zone Five, and hoped to expand it to the entire region.
HIV testing and counselling, an integral part of the programme,
would be done at the clinics, while the drug itself, which has to be
administered to the mother during labour and to the infant within 72
hours of birth, would be given at Cecilia Makiwane.
He said counselling was an excellent way of empowering women
who knew very little about the infection, and, implemented
nationally, would reach a million women a year.
"Educate the women and you educate the nation," he said.
Earlier, at the parliamentary hearings, head of the Aids Law
Project, Mark Heywood, told the health portfolio committee that
improved access to treatment would assist prevention.
If Aids drugs were made more accessible it was likely that more
women would volunteer for HIV testing at antenatal clinics.
The cost of not providing drugs to pregnant women was at the
moment about 20 000 HIV-positive infants every year.
By not providing effective prophylaxis and antiretrovirals, South
Africa would move swiftly towards the doomsday predictions of
millions of Aids orphans.
"Is there not a social imperative about keeping parents alive
longer?" he asked.
Government had to re-examine its use of resources, he said. It
seemed unacceptable that huge sums were spent buying
submarines when there was a huge need, not even for drugs, but
simply for access to HIV testing. - Sapa
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