"When
a lion comes to your village you must
raise the alarm loudly," Museveni
says. "This is what we did in Uganda;
we took it seriously and achieved good
results. AIDS ... is not like small pox
or Ebola. AIDS can be prevented as it
is transmitted through a few known ways.
If we raise awareness sufficiently, it
will stop." Between 1997 and 2000,
while the HIV infection rate climbed from
about 13% to nearly 20% in South Africa
and from about 25% to over 35% in Botswana,
it has actually decreased in Uganda, from
9.5% to 8.3%. Since there is no cure for
AIDS, lower infection rates reflect the
deaths of some people who already had
AIDS - but also a lower rate of new HIV
infections.
THE PATENTS WAR
In Pretoria, South Africa, this past
March, thousands of AIDS activists and
HIV-positive youths descended on the country's
High Court and the U.S. Embassy. Wearing
"HIV-positive" T-shirts and
baseball caps, hands locked together in
solidarity, they marched in angry protest
against the high cost of AIDS drugs. Their
placards ex pressed their rage: "Lives
Before Profits" and "AIDS Profiteer
DeadlierThan The Virus." The battle
over AIDS-drug patents had begun.
A new cocktail of generic AIDS drugs
developed by the Indian drug company CIPLA
threatens the big drug companies' lucrative
monopolies. CIPLA has offered the drug
at a cost of $350 per year per patient
to the humanitarian organization Doctors
Without Borders, and $600 per year per
patient to African governments. In March,
thirty-nine of the big pharmaceutical
companies went to court to challenge the
South African government's go ahead on
the sale of generic AIDS drugs, provoking
the March protests.
A few weeks after the court battle began,
Doctors Without Borders approached Yale
University to convince it to release its
patent on the AIDS drug dT4. Two Yale
professors had developed dT4, which the
University then licensed to Bristol-Myers
Squibb. Professor William Prusoff, one
of the developers, wrote during the height
of the controversy that the drug should
be either free or very inexpensive in
sub-Saharan Africa, and expressed disappointment
that it was not reaching the millions
of people who desperately needed it. Not
long after, Bristol-Myers announced that
it would reduce the cost of d4T by 15%
in the United States and 85% in the rest
of the world, and that it would offer
the drug for 15 cents per daily dose in
the most afflicted areas of Africa. The
other two pharmaceutical giants, GlaxoSmithKline
and Boerhinger Ingelheim GMBH, are also
expected to cut their AIDS-drug prices.
The companies, however, remain steadfast
about keeping their patent rights, which
would leave ultimate control over prices
and availability in their hands.
In response, the AIDS-devastated countries
of Africa may resort to "compulsory
licensing," ignoring the patents
and proceeding with generic drugs. International
convention recognizes the right of countries
in states of national emergency to obtain
or manufacture generic drugs, even in
breach of drug-company patents. So far,
President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa
has resisted an official declaration of
national emergency, though he promises
to go forward with generic drugs. The
U.S. government, under both former President
Bill Clinton and current President George
W. Bush, has promised not to challenge
laws passed by African countries to improve
access to AIDS drugs, even if U.S. patent
laws are broken. It has not, however,
pressed U.S. pharmaceutical firms to renounce
their patent rights -- which is why protestors
targeted the U.S. embassy.
The battle is far from over. Even at
15 cents per day, or about $55 per year,
AIDS drugs will remain beyond the means
of most Africans. At the 8th Conference
on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections
in February 2001, doctors, scientists,
and policymakers proposed that rich nations
pay for drugs and other means to combat
AIDS in Africa, with the United States
paying $3 billion. Harvard economist Jeffrey
Sachs explained that $3 billion would
only cost the United States about $10
per person, the cost of a movie ticket
and a bag of popcorn. Dr. Peter Piot of
UNAIDS believes that this additional $3
billion would go a long way towards coping
with the epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa
-- with half going to basic care for those
already infected, the other half to prevention
efforts.
Donors cannot, however, dictate how the
battle against AIDS will be fought. A
recent report issued by the Africa-America
Institute, which champions a greater U.S.
commitment to the fight against AIDS in
Africa, concludes that donors need to
support national priorities set by Africans
themselves. Local circumstances vary greatly
from country to country, the AAI argues,
so international donors need to learn
more about Africa and adapt their programs
to the needs of each country. "If
the U.S. and other donors want to make
a difference in the fight against HIV/AIDS
in Africa," AAI President Mora McLean
says, "they need to listen to Africans
and involve them as full partners in the
global battle against the epidemic."
Akin Jimoh is a Nigerian science and
health writer and a Knight Science Journalism
Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
He holds two masters degrees, in medical
physiology and public health, and has
been involved in HIV/AIDS and development
work for over 10 years. He is also the
program director of Development Communications,
a media service nongovernmental organization
(NGO) based in Lagos, Nigeria.
COPYRIGHT 2001 Economic Affairs Bureau
COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group
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