| Impoverished Mali gets deal on Western HIV drugs 04/08/2001 Associated Press BAMAKO, Mali – Mali said it has reached a deal for cut-rate HIV drugs from four major Western drug companies, becoming at least the fourth African country to do so.
Even at the sharply reduced rates, the Health Ministry said, treatment still will remain out of reach for most of the HIV-positive people in Mali – one of the world's poorest countries.
The deal, announced Saturday night, gives Mali an 89 percent cost cut in HIV drugs.
The accord was reached with Bristol-Myers Squibb, GlaxoSmithKline, Boehringer-Ingelheim and Merck Sharp and Dohme, the government said.
The cuts bring the cost of a month's treatment for each person down from $485 to $85 a month, the government said.
The price remains higher than the monthly minimum wage in Mali, an arid, landlocked nation in West Africa.
"These products remain inaccessible for the vast majority of those afflicted,'' the ministry said.
The government said it planned subsidies of up to 100 percent for the poorest patients.
The government hopes to provide treatment for up to 600 people a year through a program funded in part by an international initiative forgiving some of its old foreign debts.
At estimated 130,000 of Mali's 11 million people are living with AIDS.
With 70 percent of the world's AIDS-afflicted in sub-Saharan Africa, international drug companies have come under increasing pressure to make treatment affordable here.
Similar cost-cutting deals were announced earlier this year on behalf of Senegal, Ivory Coast, Rwanda and Uganda. |
