PHA-Exchange> WHO backs use of 3-drug AIDS pill

[Aviva]

WORLD AIDS DAY 2003: WHO backs use of 3-drug AIDS pill -Inexpensive
medicine can prolong lives of patients

http://www.aegis.org/news/sc/2003/SC031201.html
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Livingstone, Zambia -- The chief of the World Health Organization for
the first time endorsed the widespread use of a new AIDS medicine that
combines into a single pill three different anti-viral drugs that can
prolong the lives of infected patients for between $150 and $300 a
year.

The endorsement Monday by Dr. Lee Jong-wook, director general of the
WHO, in ceremonies here marking World AIDS Day is controversial because
the low-cost, three-in-one pill violates patents held by Western drug
companies. Lee's announcement was part of a formal roll-out of the
WHO's "3 by 5" initiative, which has set the audacious goal of bringing
AIDS drugs to 3 million people in low-income nations by 2005. The WHO
estimates that the goal can be met by raising $5.5 billion for the
2-year period ending in
2005.

"Now that we know what is needed, our task is to make it happen," Lee
told an audience of citizens and dignitaries in Livingstone, a tourist
town at the edge of Victoria Falls. Lee is here as part of an 80-member
delegation to Africa led by Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy
Thompson.

The AIDS drug, manufactured by maverick Indian drug maker Cipla,
combines in a pill's three layers generic versions of the patented
anti-viral medications 3tc, D4t and nevirapine. In the United States
and Europe, the three drugs are produced by three different
pharmaceutical giants, and would cost about $12,000 a year. Cipla is
ignoring the patents held by GlaxoSmithKline, producer of 3tc;
Bristol-Myers Squibb, which makes D4t, and Boehringer Ingleheim, maker
of nevirapine. The major drug companies have offered to supply their
brand-name products at a fraction of their cost in the developed world,
but the generic Cipla product is between a half to a third of even that
discounted price. The Cipla drug could bring the price of AIDS
treatment in poor countries to less than 50 cents a day. In addition to
its low cost, the Cipla combination pill needs to be taken just once in
the morning and once
in the afternoon; some other multi-drug regimens require that dozens of
pills be taken throughout the day.

 The energetic, Korean-born WHO leader does not always see eye-to-eye 
with United States policy makers.
He scoffed at the notion, popular in the Bush administration, that
there is inadequate infrastructure in the developing world to handle
the rapid scale-up of cheap anti-viral drug delivery.

"If we wait for the infrastructure to grow, it will never grow," he
said. "In an African village, if they know a drug will help their
sister or their sons live, then the will create an infrastructure in no
time."