Pfizer offers free drugs to poor countries

United States pharmaceutical giant Pfizer announced on Wednesday that it would provide unlimited supplies of the drug Diflucan free of charge to treat HIV/AIDS sufferers in 50 of the world’s poorest countries. “This is a lifetime of work not just a one-day press release,” Dr Henry McKinnell, Chairman and CEO of Pfizer, said at UN headquarters. “We will continue to work with the UN, the WHO and other international organisations on how public/private partnerships like the Diflucan programme can be most effective.” Diflucan is the brand name of an anti-fungal drug used to treat cryptococcal meningitis, a life-threatening infection of the brain which afflicts about one in ten AIDS patients in the late stage of the disease. The mortality rate of those suffering from untreated meningitis is more than 90 percent, Pfizer said. The 50 least-developed countries to benefit from the offer are home to about 12 million AIDS sufferers. Pfizer is already providing South Africa with a two year supply of Diflucan which McKinnell said was worth about US $50 million. To date, 185 institutions in South Africa have begun to distribute medicine through the programme. “We have in South Africa enough drugs to treat 27,000 people,” McKinnell said. “If we get treatment to 50,000 people in the next year or two that will be a major achievement.” The number was small in comparison to the number of AIDS sufferers but it would have a “significant impact on transmission rates,” he said. South African ambassador to the United States Sheila Violet Makate Sisulu said: “What makes this offer so special is the appreciation that the planning required for the implementation of the initiative must be done with governments in order to meet the priorities identified.” Plans were underway to expand the programme to Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Namibia and Swaziland. “Nineteen percent of the inhabitants of my country are infected with the HIV/AIDS virus,” Botswana Minister of Lands, Housing and Environment Jacob Nkate told journalists in the absence of a representative from the health ministry. “This assistance from Pfizer comes at a time when we in Botswana need it most.” In addition to providing Diflucan, McKinnell said that medical training and patient education to improve literacy levels would become a critical part of Pfizer’s activities in sub-Saharan Africa, as it already was in the United States. “Only 50 percent of Americans read at the eighth grade level. They can’t read the educational material that is so critical to success in education. Nor, frankly, can they read the instructions their physicians give them,” McKinnell said. UNAIDS Executive Director Peter Piot welcomed Pfizer’s offer: “We look forward to this new programme being implemented as swiftly and broadly as possible, and to its significant impact in the treatment of fungal brain infections and esophageal candidiasis, which are common among AIDS patients.” But Joey B. Pressley, the New York AIDS Coalition executive director, called for more to be done. “Pharmaceuticals must accelerate the programme to include other retrovirals ... it is our hope that other pharmaceuticals will follow suit and do more,” he said Pfizer’s announcement was made three weeks before the start of a three day special session of the United Nations General Assembly on HIV/AIDS, which is expected to forge a global plan to fight the pandemic. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has been at the forefront of the preparations for this event, and has issued an international plan of action urging all sectors of society to join the battle against HIV/AIDS.