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| Wednesday, 3 December 2003 |
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Indian manufacturer extends cheapest AIDS drugs offer NAIROBI, Tuesday (AFP) The international medical charity Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF - MSF Doctors without Borders), World AIDS Day - announced that an Indian drug manufacturer had slashed by half the cost of one of the most effective treatments used to fight AIDS. "Cipla this morning offered to MSF and other organisations a three-in-one combination for 140 dollars per patient per year," MSF spokesman Weger Wentholt told AFP by phone. Previously Cipla sold the preparation, Triomune, which combines three generic antitretroviral drugs into a single pill taken twice a day for about 280 dollars per person per year. Antiretroviral drugs prevent the onset of full-blown AIDS in people infected with HIV and make such infections manageable. For lack of such drugs, three million people died in 2003. The equivalent patented drugs - only available in three separate pills - cost about 700 dollars per patient per year. On Sunday, the Indian government said it had struck the same deal with Indian drug manufacturers to treat people in India. The same price had already been reached by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to treat people in a select number of countries in the Caribbean and Africa. The deal announced Monday, however, is not restricted to a specific list of countries and according to MSF, will benefit hundreds of thousands of people in the short term and will do much to help the realisation of the UN ambition to treat three million people living with HIV by 2005 ("3-by-5"). More so as the WHO announced Monday, also in Nairobi, that it had "pre-qualified" three versions of the three-in-one therapy, an approval that makes it easier for developing countries to endorse their use. A similar preparation is manufactured by another Indian pharmaceutical company, Ranbaxy. |
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