AIDS news

Is it good news?

The FDA has approved a generic "cocktail" that other countries have been using for years. Empire Notes comments:

This is of particular significance because of George W. Bush's "Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief." Of his vaunted $15 billion over five years for AIDS relief, only a little over $1 billion has been given to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria (this is expected to rise to a little over $2 billion by 2009). The rest goes to his "Emergency Plan," which focuses on 13 African countries, Haiti, Guyana, and Vietnam, and only allows the use of FDA-approved drugs. Thus, while, over the past two years, people have been dying in unprecedented numbers, the administrators of Bush's plan have insisted on paying exorbitant prices for brand-name drugs.

One might even have been forgiven for thinking that the emergency plan was just a cynical scam perpetrated for two reasons:

* To undercut the international Global Fund (initiated by the U.N., although you'd have a bloody hard time finding the phrase "United Nations" on its website)

* To provide a boondoggle for American pharmaceutical companies that are running out of places to market their insanely overpriced drugs.

Somehow, though, things are changing slowly, probably out of a need to appear slightly more multilateral. The FDA approval for the cocktail was fast-tracked by the Bush administration and the company that got the approval, Aspen Pharmaceuticals, is actually a South African company, not an American one.

Don't get too excited, though. We still don't know at what price this generic cocktail will be sold. And, says the Global AIDS alliance,

This approval, a full two years after the President’s declaration of a global AIDS emergency, is a positive development. But, the product that was approved is not a fixed-dose combination, and, as a result, is not as easy to take. Also, the company would not have gotten its drug approved without cozy relationships with several brand name companies, something not all producers of essential, generic medications enjoy. As a result, while many more generics are urgently needed to simplify treatment and make it more cost-effective, this might not be replicated any time soon.

Anyway, so pathetic is the state of worldwide mobilization against the most immediate global crisis and one of the most severe that even this counts as good news.