PHA-Exchange> Thailand to make cheap AIDS drugs available in health scheme

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from Vern Weitzel <vern.weitzel at undp.org> -----
Thailand to make cheap AIDS drugs available in health
scheme

BANGKOK (AFP) - Thailand will make low-cost
anti-retroviral drugs available on its national health
scheme for the more than half a million people in the
kingdom living with     HIV/     AIDS, the health
ministry said.


Officials attending Thailand's 10th national seminar
on AIDS hailed the move as "the first of its kind in
the world."

"Social and health welfare benefits for AIDS patients
is to become part of the state program from October
2005," the ministry said in a statement.

"Anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs) are to be included in
the benefit package of the universal health care
coverage."

Thailand already distributes the drugs free to about
50,000 low-income people living with HIV under a pilot
scheme.

A ministry official confirmed to AFP that the drugs,
produced generically in Thailand, would be available
as part of the health scheme, which allows the poor to
receive hospital treatment for 30 baht (75 cents) per
visit.

The drugs will be available primarily to those whose
CD4 T cell count has dropped below 200, the official
said.

CD4 T cells are those which the HIV virus hijacks in
order to replicate itself and which it wrecks in the
process, eventually exposing the body to opportunistic
disease.

More than one million people in Thailand have become
infected with HIV, the virus which causes AIDS, since
the first case was reported here 21 years ago. About
half a million have died.

Thailand responded swiftly to the disease in the late
1980s after a period of denial, but experts warned
last year that it had lost its momentum in the AIDS
fight.

Experts at this week's seminar warned that rapidly
changing patterns of behavior including unsafe sex
were exposing millions of Thai teenagers to greater
health risks.

"Thai teenagers were engaged in sexual intercourse
quite young, below 17 years on average. Their sex
encounters became brief and superficial with condom
use among 25-30 percent of them," the ministry said in
its statement.

A year ago Thailand hosted the 15th International AIDS
Conference at which local activists demanded ARVs be
included in the kingdom's health scheme.

Last October Thailand vowed to boost production of
locally made cheap "copycat" anti-AIDS drugs amid an
uproar by US corporations which argue the drugs break
patents and deprive the firms of money needed to
research new anti-AIDS drugs.



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