The U.S. government, under fire for choosing a former drug company executive to head its $15 billion AIDS program, said on Tuesday it was ready to use cheap copycat generic drugs to fight the disease in Africa.
The appointment this month of Randall Tobias, the retired chairman and chief executive of Eli Lilly and Co., was attacked by activists who said it showed the U.S. AIDS policy was tied to the interests of the pharmaceutical industry.
But U.S. officials at an international AIDS conference said Washington would buy lower cost generics if they were cost-effective, despite industry concerns the copied versions of patented drugs undermine innovation.
“We certainly want to get the highest quality at the lowest price,” said Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and one of the architects of the U.S. AIDS plan.
“That may mean getting it from the (brand-name) companies who bring their price low enough so it is feasible to be part of the program. It does not exclude generic drugs ... there will be a number of different approaches depending on the country.”
HIV, the virus which causes AIDS, has infected 42 million people worldwide, nearly three-quarters of them in Africa where modern life-saving antiretroviral medicines are out of reach to the vast majority.
Fauci was sharing a platform with Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson, who urged other countries to follow the U.S. lead in doing more in the fight against AIDS.
Funding shortfall
Thompson also chairs the board of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria — launched a year ago at the behest of U.N Secretary-General Kofi Annan — which holds a separate meeting for donors in Paris on Wednesday.
He said he was “cautiously optimistic” the fund would raise some new money this year but it would fall $500-800 million short of the amount needed to fund all the programs due to be approved by its scientific experts in 2003.
“We will be short ... It’s obvious that we all need to do a little bit more because we do not have enough dollars this year to meet our commitments,” Thompson said.
The Global Fund hopes to tap not only governments but also the private sector to boost resources. Thompson said he plans an African tour with business people in December to raise cash.
Hopes for this week’s donor’s conference in Paris have taken a knock following a decision by the European Union not to pledge any new money.
Explaining the move in Brussels, European Commission head spokesman Reijo Kemppinen said Europe as a whole had played its part by pledging a total of $2.56 billion to the fund.
French President Jacques Chirac and British Prime Minister Tony Blair had urged other leaders to promise up to $1 billion at the Paris talks after the U.S. authorized that amount.
The U.S. offer is dependent on its contribution not exceeding more than one third of the total — a condition meant to encourage other countries to give more.