PEPFAR accused of

A US campaigning organization has claimed that the US President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief is "too slow" to add generic antiretroviral drugs to its procurement lists for distribution to countries most affected by HIV/AIDS.

The Center for Public Integrity, a group opposed to corporate influence in politics, which is funded by Democratic Party supporters, has been running a campaign, titled Divine Intervention, against the Republican US President, George W Bush's $15.0-billion PEPFAR program. The CPI has calculated that only about 5% of the PEPFAR's budget for antiretrovirals, $15.0 million, was spent on generic drugs in 2004 and 2005.

The PEPFAR only purchases drugs that have been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration or been given tentative approval via an expedited review process. The CPI claims that the FDA had approved 26 generic ARVs for the aid program but that, in 2004, "almost all ARVs administered through the program were from well-known companies that make brand-name drugs." The group even suggests that the requirement that drugs be registered in recipient countries is a deliberate bureaucratic obstacle against generic drugmakers.