Generic AIDS medications increase treatment success rates

NAIROBI, Kenya -- Poor nations that have suspended patents on AIDS drugs to allow the use of generic equivalents have shown greater success in treating those infected with the disease, a medical aid agency said Monday.\nBut, a report by UNAIDS said most countries are still not meeting their goals in battling the pandemic.\nMedecins Sans Frontieres released a report contracted by the World Health Organization on how the group has used generic drugs to treat AIDS patients in 10 countries.\nThe group, also known as Doctors Without Borders, found that in countries where generic drugs were on the market, competition among pharmaceutical companies drove down prices and made anti-retroviral drugs more widely available.\nThe report was released at the 13th International Conference on AIDS and Sexually Transmitted Infections in Africa, which opened in Nairobi Sunday. The conference is focusing on how to make HIV/AIDS treatments more affordable and widespread on the continent, where more than 30 million people are infected with the virus that causes AIDS.\nUNAIDS, the agency responsible for coordinating global AIDS-fighting efforts, also released a report Monday on the progress countries have made in fighting HIV/AIDS. The authors found most countries will not meet the goal of stopping and reversing the spread of the disease by 2015.\nThe 189 U.N. member states set that goal at the U.N. General Assembly Special Session on HIV/AIDS in June 2001. Governments were asked to provide status reports in 2003, and UNAIDS found many nations are not keeping pace to meet the goal.\nWhile most nations have increased spending to fight HIV/AIDS, "only a fraction of people have access to basic prevention services," the report said. Discrimination against people infected with HIV remains a major problem, and the number of children orphaned by AIDS continues to grow, the authors said.\nThe UNAIDS study also found the number of people in poor countries who have access to anti-retroviral drugs remains extremely low, with only 30,000 people receiving medication in 2002, out of an estimated five million people in need.\nMedecins Sans Frontieres has established anti-retroviral drug programs in 10 countries in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and Central America to study the best, and most affordable, way to provide treatment for people carrying HIV.\n"A lot of things have improved," said Sophie-Marie Scouflaire, the lead author of the report. She said the most significant factor in lowering prices was the introduction of generic sources in a country by suspending patents, a procedure allowed under international trade rules.\nThe nonprofit group said the biggest factor in obtaining and distributing the drugs was a clear commitment by governments to formally suspend patent rights that would otherwise keep generic equivalents from being sold.\nSince even the cheapest drugs are still too expensive for people in the poorest countries, governments also need to buy the drugs so they can be distributed at a reduced cost, the authors said.\n"We know that it is the emerging government program that will ultimately reach large numbers of people with AIDS, and we are now helping by creating a simplified, decentralized model of treatment at the primary care level," said Didakus Odhiambo, a co-author of the report.