The Hindu Business Line : Free AIDS drugs from today, with or without price pact

THE absence of an agreement on drug prices will not hold up the Government's initiative to make free anti-AIDS drugs available to people living with HIV/AIDS from April 1.

The Government will kick off the first quarter of the free AIDS-drugs initiative on Thursday in eight centres located in States where the prevalence of the illness is high. The anti-AIDS drugs to support the first quarter of this initiative have been procured by the World Health Organisation (WHO), said Ms Meenakshi Datta Ghosh, Project Director, National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO).

Speaking to Business Line, she said that WHO has, through its existing procurement mechanism, sourced and delivered the medicines at the identified centres, giving the Government four months to sort out drug price issues with pharma companies.

By that time the elections would be over and the new Government would be in place, which would help budget the allocations to support the programme. The Union Health Minister, Ms Sushma Swaraj, announced the free anti-AIDS drugs programme on the eve of the last World AIDS Day (December 1). The cost of the project was estimated to be Rs 200 crore.

Meanwhile, organisations working in the health sector said that pharmaceutical companies such as Cipla that were active in making anti-AIDS drugs accessible in Africa, needed to bring down prices in India too.

"India has about 4.2 million people suffering from the illness and about 10 per cent of them would require drugs. If pharma companies were able to offer drugs to the Clinton Foundation at prices close to Rs 17 per day per patient ($140 or about Rs 6,078 for a year), they should be able to match that or better it for Indian patients."

Pharma company representatives, however, said that prices and accessing drugs are not related. "It is not the money that makes a difference - the infrastructure to make the drugs available needs to be in place, the medical fraternity needs to be trained on the issue and systems need to be in place to monitor the administration of the medicines to keep a check on patients developing drug resistance."

Further, they point out that the Government's promise of fiscal incentives to the pharma and diagnostic companies got derailed with the Government going into an election mode, thus delaying the budgeting exercise.

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