E-drug: Uganda Urges Compensation for AIDS Research Costs
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[Copied from Ip-Health with thanks. KM]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010419/hl/aids_13.html
Uganda Urges Compensation for AIDS Research Costs
Pharmaceutical Firms Drop Case Against South Africa - (Reuters)
KAMPALA (Reuters) - Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni said on Thursday
that governments around the world should compensate drug companies for
their research and development costs as a way to lower AIDS (news - web
sites) drugs prices.
He was speaking as top pharmaceutical firms dropped their court bid to
stop South Africa importing cheap copies of their AIDS drugs in what
could be a breakthrough in getting treatment to millions of impoverished
sufferers.
The drugs firms had argued that proposed South African legislation would
override their cherished patent rights and undermine the funding of future
medical research.
``These drug companies are not philanthropists so I'll not waste my time
trying to make them so,'' Museveni said at the start of a two-day AIDS
conference in the Ugandan capital.
``What we should do is negotiate with them...do some fund-raising, and
we pay off these drug companies for their research and development costs
and they can lower their prices,'' he said without elaborating.
It was not clear whether Museveni was aware of the decision by the drug
companies at the time he was speaking.
There are about 1.7 million people living with AIDS in Uganda out of a
total population of over 20 million, and about 900,000 have died from
the disease. But medical experts say the cheapest drugs cost about $300
a month in a country where the per capita income is about $350 per year.
The South African case was brought by the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers'
Association of South Africa (PMA) and 39 international drug makers, who
had sought to prevent implementation of a new law that would allow the
import of cheap copies of patented drugs.