Pfizer Pledges Bigger AIDS Effort

The head of the world's largest drug company says pharmaceutical companies must change their way of doing business to ensure that poor countries have access to essential AIDS drugs.

"Our business model was developing and making drugs for people and organizations who can afford to pay for them," said Henry McKinnell, chief executive of Pfizer Corp. and chairman of the U.S. industry group Pharma.

"I think the world has said to us, 'That is well and good, but you have to do more than you have traditionally done to ensure access to those who can't afford access,'" he said.

AP

Dr. Henry McKinnell announced at the U.N. last week that Pfizer will expand its free distribution of Diflucan. Joey Pressley, executive director of the New York AIDS Coalition, listens at right.

On Monday, experts on AIDS from North America and Uganda launched a Pfizer-financed center that will train 80 African doctors a year on treating patients with anti-retroviral drugs. The aim of the school was to quash criticism that there is insufficient infrastructure and training for African doctors to administer new drug therapies.

The announcement of Pfizer's project came after a company decision last week to expand its free distribution of Diflucan, a drug used to treat two types of infections common in AIDS patients, to 50 of the world's least-developed countries. Previously, the company was only giving the drug away in South Africa. Pfizer was one of the drug companies vilified by activists for failing to address the African AIDS crisis.

Activists have launched a scathing campaign demanding cheaper drugs for Africans. They have recommended that African governments adopt World Trade Organization rules that allow a country to suspend patent laws so that generic drug manufacturers can produce the same drugs for as little as $600 per patient annually.

McKinnell argued that to blame price and patents for the lack of access oversimplifies the problems with delivering drugs in Africa, which he says are mostly structural. He points out, for example, that because of limited diagnostic facilities, only 10 percent of the estimated 27 million Africans with HIV know that they are infected.

He added that there are cheap, non-patented drugs for malaria and tuberculosis, but both diseases kill more people than AIDS in Africa every year.

"We se the good that we do, but then to be vilified by the press as people who are denying access to our products around the world, frankly makes us mad," McKinnell said.

Since then, major pharmaceutical companies have announced several different plans to supply certain drugs at cost, or no cost, to more than 50 countries.

Critics have welcomed the apparent change in strategy at the big multinational firms, but are cautious until they see details of the plans and the drugs actually delivered.

McKinnell said he sees no way to make a profit in Africa, but that there are other benefits.

"I think our shareholders are wise enough to know...that what we do in this arena, to the extent to which it earns us goodwill around the world, gets us access to policy-makers, allows us legitimately to be able to participate in the debate of what public policy should be, that's a good thing."

By Chris Tomlinson
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