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During a current three-nation African tour, the coordinator of the US President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, Randall Tobias, defended his government's refusal to fund the use of generic anti-AIDS drugs in developing countries, the Associated Press reported.
Tobias raised questions about the quality of generic medicines, saying: "Patients here in Africa deserve to have assurances about the safety and effectiveness of drugs, in the same way that people in the United States do."
The US, which recently pledged US $15 billion over five years to tackle global HIV/AIDS, has been accused by AIDS NGOs of seeking to protect major drug manufacturers holding the rights to patented drugs.
Research suggests that generic drugs are considerably cheaper than the patented equivalents, and fixed-dose combination therapies make it easier for HIV-positive people to stick to their treatment regime.
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