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The National Aids Control Council of Kenya has said the government is having difficulty buying cheap HIV/AIDS drugs despite the government passing legislation in June to allow low-cost importation in June, the 'Daily Nation' reported on Wednesday.
Deputy Director of NACC, Dr Patrick Oregi, was quoted as saying that some rules of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) were hindering the importation of anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs) used to treat the disease.
A clause in WTO agreements which stipulated that the drugs could be manufactured locally or given to Kenya as donations but not exported for sale was hindering Kenyan government efforts to source cheaper drugs abroad, according to Oregi.
"At the moment, the drugs can only be shipped from countries such as India and Brazil as donations," he said.
"It amounts to discrimination, stigmatisation and violation of human rights and dignity to deny people infected with HIV/AIDS medical cover due to their status," he added.
The Kenyan parliament took the first step towards improving public accessibility to anti-HIV/AIDS drugs in June, when it passed the Industrial Property Bill, making Kenya the second African country, after South Africa, to adopt such legislation.
[for details, go to: Kenya archive]
Only two thousand of Kenya's estimated 2.2 million people living with HIV/AIDS are currently able to afford treatment with ARVs, according to health officials.
It was impossible to provide ARVs to patients in public hospitals as it would mean spending one fifth of the ministry's Ksh 15 billion (US $195 million) budget on the therapy - forcing spending on many other services to be frozen, Health Minister Sam Ongeri stated in September.
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