  
Global AIDS fund will push drug firms to cut prices
Last Updated: 2001-05-02 14:04:50 EDT (Reuters Health)
By Irwin Arieff
UNITED NATIONS, (Reuters) - Wealthy nations will use the leverage of a proposed global fund against AIDS to pressure drug companies into funding more AIDS research, while cutting drug prices, two British ministers said on Tuesday.
Britain's finance minister, Gordon Brown, and International Development Secretary Clare Short also said industrial nations should team up with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the new fund so there would be no duplication of effort.
The two were in New York to attend a UN Economic and Social Council meeting on world poverty and economic policy.
"We want one fund. There is a real danger in development that you get proliferation in funds and initiatives," Short told reporters. "So we are very keen on a joint effort."
Annan last week proposed a single super fund capable of halting and reversing the spread of AIDS, which has killed nearly 22 million people in Africa alone.
He told an African summit in Nigeria that another $7 billion to $10 billion a year would be needed to finance a global assault on AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis, compared with the approximately $1 billion a year spent now.
Word that the rich nations were prepared to contribute to a war chest to fight AIDS and other infectious diseases in the poorest countries came out of back-to-back meetings of the Group of Seven rich nations, World Bank and International Monetary Fund in Washington that ended on Monday.
A British official later said that Annan, Short and Brown agreed after talks that one worldwide fund should be set up to fight malaria and tuberculosis as well as AIDS. "The plan is now moving on a single track," the official said.
Details are not set yet as to who would run the fund. UN officials say they are considering an independent director and an independent board representing various contributors and others heavily involved in combating AIDS. Others say the World Bank is being considered as administrator for the fund.
The goal is to make the new fund the centerpiece of a UN General Assembly special session on AIDS beginning on June 25 in New York City. The focus will then shift to a meeting of the G7--the United States, Japan, Britain, Germany, France, Italy and Canada-to be held in Genoa, Italy, this July.
Brown, who also chairs the policymaking committee of the International Monetary Fund, flatly ruled out using the fund to pour money into buying drugs, in effect subsidizing pharmaceutical firms "to sell drugs at high prices."
Drug makers now spend only 10% of their research money on diseases responsible for some 90% of all deaths, he said. Together, AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria kill 5.5 million people a year in the developing world, he said.
One way to encourage drug firms to devote more money to AIDS, malaria and TB research is to offer tax credits, a plan he said many countries were prepared to look at.
Asked how much money the wealthiest nations were prepared to kick in, Brown said it was too early to say.
"There's a whole range of different figures," he said. "There is a lot of discussion yet to take place; there is a lot of work to be done."
"And it's got to be borne in mind that the commitment that is made by governments and international organizations has also got to influence and make sure that pharmaceutical companies do what we expect them to do," he said.
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