  
South Africa unlikely to fast-track key AIDS drugs
Last Updated: 2001-04-20 11:38:28 EDT (Reuters Health)
By Steven Swindells
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa's success in winning a landmark case against the drug industry was tempered on Friday by signs that cheap AIDS medicines were unlikely to flood quickly into a country ravaged by the disease.
The decision by 39 of the world's most powerful pharmaceutical companies to drop their legal action against Pretoria on Thursday was hailed by activists as a blow to profiteering and a potential lifeline to Africa's 25 million HIV-positive people. However, few of South Africa's 4.7 million AIDS sufferers are any closer to getting access to affordable key antiretroviral drugs.
South African health officials said Pretoria was committed to fighting AIDS through education, prevention and drugs that primarily treated diseases associated with AIDS such as pneumonia and sexually transmitted diseases.
"The use of antiretrovirals would need a policy decision because of the cost implications. Clearly even at the current prices on offer they are still not in the realms of what is possible," said health department spokeswoman Jo-Anne Collinge. "We are looking at how we can get the cheapest source of drugs to treat opportunistic diseases...but I wouldn't want to speculate on a timetable," Collinge said.
A meeting between Pretoria and the drug firms involved in the case is scheduled for early next month to plan a way forward, but health officials have previously stressed that the case was not just about AIDS drugs but about all medicines, including those to combat health challenges such as tuberculosis.
The Treatment Action Campaign, the AIDS activist group that supported the government against the drug firms, has called on the health ministry to speed up implementation of its Medicines Act, which was at the heart of the court action.
Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang is scheduled to visit India in the coming weeks. Indian firm Cipla has applied to Pretoria to supply generic AIDS drugs at a fraction of the cost of patented drugs. Several drug companies have offered Pretoria discounted prices on their antiretrovirals, but these have been rebuffed by the government, based on cost and infrastructure concerns.
United Nations Development Programmes (UNDP) administrator Mark Malloch Brown told Reuters that AIDS in the developing world could not be solved through drugs alone but through a two-pronged attack that included prevention.
South Africa President Thabo Mbeki has ruled out the use of antiretroviral drugs in the public health sector after questioning their efficacy and expense. Mbeki's stance on AIDS caused controversy after he questioned the causal link between HIV and AIDS and appointed leading AIDS "dissidents" to his own advisory panel on the disease, many of whom argue that AIDS is caused by recreational drug use and antiretroviral drugs.
The government is currently locked in discussions on whether to give the green light to trials of nevirapine to cut down on mother-to-child transmission. The German firm Boehringer-Ingelheim has offered the drug free to Pretoria but the government wants ethical safeguards before the trials at 18 national sites begin.
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