Clinton announces reduced-price HIV drugs
Bill Clinton is an ardent supporter of HIV/Aids campaigns
Also In The News
|
Chelsea skipper John Terry has been charged with improper conduct following comments his made about referee Graham Poll in the wake of the Blues' defeat to Tottenham Hotspur. |  |
Friday, 01, Dec 2006 12:19
Children with HIV and Aids in developing countries are to have access to cheaper treatment in a deal agreed between the Clinton Foundation HIV/Aids Initiative (CHAI) and UnitAid.
Pharmaceutical companies Cipla and Ranbaxy will produce a three-in-one tablet that replaces individual solutions which need refrigeration.
It will cost less than $60 a year for an average child weighing 10kg.
And Cipla, together with other suppliers, will supply a total of 19 different antiretroviral (ARV) formulations for children at prices that are, on average, 45 per cent less than the lowest rates available today in low-income countries.
The cuts in prices have been made possible through UnitAid, an international drug purchase facility, which will provide $35 million in the next year to buy medicines and diagnostics, and through a further $15 million from CHAI.
Children living in the foundation's procurement consortium, which currently includes 62 developing countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean and represents more than 90 per cent of people living with HIV/Aids in developing countries, will benefit from the reduced prices.
"Though the world has made progress in expanding HIV/Aids treatment to adults, children have been left behind. Only one in ten children who needs treatment is getting it," said President Clinton.
"I applaud the commitments that Cipla, Ranbaxy and others have made to lower the price of the drugs we need to treat children, and I thank UnitAid for the new funds that have made these prices possible."
French foreign minister Philippe Douste-Blazy, chairman of the UnitAid board, added: "No child should have to live with HIV, but every one who does deserves a full life. Paediatric drugs should be affordable and easy to administer. That has been an early goal of UnitAid, and we are pleased that our partnership with President Clinton will now make this possible."
The programme was launched today, National Aids Day, at the Kalawati Saran children's hospital in New Delhi, where the Indian government announced a new national programme to treat children with HIV.
It aims to increase the number of children on treatment from less than 2,000 to 10,000 by the end of March next year.
Almost six million people in India have HIV, and around half a million are dying each year from HIV-related causes, despite the country being one of the largest manufacturers of cheap anti-retroviral drugs.