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HIV/AIDS is a disease of poverty: 95% of the 40 million people living with HIV/AIDS live in developing countries.1 Women bear the brunt of the epidemic, as they are socially and medically in a more vulnerable position. It is estimated that more than five million young women (between the age of 14 and 24) are living with HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa and 2.5 million young men.2 As a powerful combination of three types of life-prolonging antiretroviral drugs3 (hereafter ARVs) has given millions of infected people in the developed world new quality of life and the ability to lead productive lives. The issue of access to treatment for people living with HIV/AIDS in the developing world has emerged as one of the main issues of the pandemic. UNAIDS estimates that only 4% of those requiring retroviral drugs in Africa currently have access to the drugs.4
There are two main aspects hampering access to treatment in Sub-Saharan Africa - one is the inadequate infrastructure; the other is the price of those medicines, which are guarded under international patent law and the patents to these drugs are held by six big pharmaceutical companies.5 Over the past two years many positive developments have allowed for a greater availability of drugs in the developing world. Following the increasing production of generic ARVs by companies in India, Thailand and Brazil and a high-profile campaign to lower the cost of these medicines, prices have fallen by an average of 90% in the developing world. However, for the least developed countries in Africa with a per capita income of $300, many of which are hardest hit, this price is still too high. At the recent World Trade Organisation talks in Doha, the right of developing countries to ignore intellectual property law in favour of the public health of their population was reaffirmed in a declaration that many would have regarded impossible only a year ago. The World Bank is now offering grants for countries to finance ARVs for their population and the Global Fund to Fight HIV AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria will make even more money available for treatment. These developments have shifted the focus from the pharmaceutical companies onto other issues. These include the failing health-care systems in many African nations, the...