Costly drugs and tests block AIDS treatment

The high cost of laboratory tests and medicines are preventing more than a million HIV-positive people from accessing treatment, Kenya's National AIDS Control Council (NACC) has said. According to NACC director, Patrick Orege, only 28,000 of the estimated 1.4 million infected people had been tested and were using the available antiretrovirals. He said the rest were unable to afford the US $26 per test charged by selected public health facilities, and pay a further $26 per month for anti-AIDS drugs. A local newspaper, The Nation, quoted Orege as saying: "We have a reasonable stock of antiretrovirals but the problem is how to make them available to the needy. We need a shorter and more affordable process that would favour the poor."