South African PMA, TAC affidavits dispute industry offers on AIDS drug

The South African Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association has rejectedclaims made in parliament by the country's Health Minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, that drug companies had failed to offer price discounts on HIV/AIDS drugs. In fact, it says, several companies had made offers "repeatedly, explicitly and in writing," reports the Marketletter's local correspondent

This challenge comes in the SAPMA's answer to the affidavit lodged by the Treatment Action Campaign HIV/AIDS pressure group with the Pretoria High Court ahead of the resumption of the industry's court case against South Africa's Medicines Control Act on April 18 (Marketletter April 16). Judge President Bernard Ngoepe has allowed the TAC to take part in the case as an amicus curiae (Marketletter March 12).

In the answering affidavit, SAPMA chief executive Miryenna Deeb discusses drug company initiatives to address South Africa's HIV/AIDS crisis, "inter alia by projects aimed at providing greater access to the medicines which they produce and which are useful in the treatment of HIV/AIDS." These attempts "go back a long time and have been ongoing despite a general unresponsiveness on the part of government to utilize the offered assistance," says the affidavit, which also includes a series of letters bearing testimony to, for example, "the level and nature of the attempted involvement of GlaxoSmithKline."