Lobby group urges cheaper AIDS drugs

A South African AIDS lobby group has lost 100 of its activists to AIDS-related illnesses in a period of just over a four months. The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) said most of the members who died between March and July 2003 were women younger than 24, and only one was using anti-HIV/AIDS drugs. Zackie Achmat, chairman of the TAC, called on the government to make the drugs more easily accessible to people living with HIV/AIDS by reducing the price to under R200.00 (US $28.53) per month. The drugs currently sell at R300.00 ($42.79) per monthly dose. He said the government could achieve this by issuing licences for the local manufacture of generic versions of the drugs. Achmat was quoted by the South African Press Association (SAPA) as saying: "I am confident the government will act urgently on this. Six hundred people die in our country every day, which is a tragedy. But, even worse is that, there are 1,500 new infections every day."