Word: hiv
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...latest drug cocktails may soon downgrade AIDS from a death sentence to a chronic disease--in countries that can afford the typical $15,000 annual cost per patient. But what about the cash-starved developing world, which currently accounts for nearly 90% of new HIV infections? It's an issue that countries like South Africa and Thailand are struggling with. And a growing number of government health ministers and AIDS activists are proposing an unusual solution: rip off the drug companies...
...hottest debate is in South Africa, where nearly 3.5 million of that country's 40 million citizens are HIV-infected--more than three times the U.S. rate--and 50,000 new HIV cases emerge each month. Drug prices tend to be high, a holdover from apartheid, when price premiums were needed to encourage foreign companies to override sanctions. Says Mojanku Gumbi, an adviser to South Africa's new President, Thabo Mbeki: "This is not about intellectual property rights. It's about pricing structure and segmenting of markets. We are saying that the drug companies can't make the same profits...
...similar struggle has been going on in Thailand, which has an estimated 1.5 million HIV infections out of a population of 60 million. Yet Thailand's ability to produce drugs locally has forced the multinational companies to drop prices. Until last year, Flucanazole, an important antibiotic used to fight a fatal form of meningitis that accompanies AIDS, cost $7.36 a tablet. This year the Thais began manufacturing it locally, and the price dropped to $1. Glaxo Wellcome reduced the price of AZT to less than $1 per tablet after Thailand began making its own version...
Even so, this demographic group is often difficult to reach. Many elderly people are reluctant to discuss their intimate life with strangers. "A lot of people were taught that you don't air your dirty laundry," says John Gargotta, supervisor for the Senior HIV Intervention Project, an AIDS advocacy group. Most troubling, though, is that doctors often fail to consider HIV as a possible illness among their senior patients. As a result, the elderly are often misdiagnosed. Also, AIDS symptoms like dementia and weight loss can mimic the ravages of old age. "So there is a higher prevalence of people...
Early intervention saved Sue Saunders. Her HIV was diagnosed eight years ago, but she is alive today, thanks in part to protease inhibitors. Meanwhile, she has made it her mission to warn others about the dangers of high-risk sex in the golden years. "I'd just like to save one life," she says...