Pressure grows on South Africa to accept cheap AIDS drugs; "honeymoon" is

Despite the pharmaceutical industry's abandonment of its court challengeto South African legislation allowing the importation of cheap generic copies of patented HIV/AIDS drugs (Marketletter April 23), the signs are that the country's estimated 4.7 million HIV/AIDS patients are unlikely to be reaping the benefits of affordable medications any time soon, to the anger of local activists.

An hour after the industry withdrew its case, Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang and her department officials were warning that the government was unlikely to be providing treatments in the short term, given that the country still lacked the health care infrastructure to distribute antiretroviral drugs and could not afford the drugs without outside aid, even at discounted prices. However, the Health Minister added that this did "not mean that because you do not produce antiretrovirals and administer them, you are not treating people who are HIV positive."

Health Department spokeswoman Jo-Anne Collinge is reported by Reuters as saying that the government is looking at how it can get the cheapest source of drugs to treat opportunistic diseases, but she would not want to speculate on a timetable for achieving this. The use of antiretrovirals would need a policy decision because of the cost implications, she said, and added that, "clearly, even at the current prices on offer, they are still not in the realms of what is possible."