Access to medicines - lessons for "big pharma" from the HIV crisis in Africa

The main lesson that research-based pharmaceutical companies should takefrom the ongoing controversy in South Africa on the issue of access to antiretroviral drugs for HIV/AIDS (Marketletters passim) is that questions of drug price and access are board-level issues, according to a new report, From Commerce to Compassion: A Band-Aid for HIV in Africa, published by Cambridge Pharma Consultancy's PPR Communications division.

"Policy-making in this most sensitive of areas must rise to the top of the chief executive's agenda, enabling it to be managed from the helicopter view of the organization's best overall interests," says PPR.

Dogged by economic half-truths and political posturing at the government level, and up against "a sublime coalition of aid groups, dissident activists and spin doctors," the pharmaceutical industry has struggled to get its messages across. However, in conceding important ground on intellectual property rights and pricing policies in South Africa, the industry has set some dangerous precedents that go beyond the remit of public policy, and made price comparisons with the developed world even more unpalatable.