HIV victims seek better medicines
3/12/2005 8:41
HIV patients want more effective medicines to give them a chance at a
better life.
Meng Lin, who was diagnosed with HIV in Beijing in 1995, said
many AIDS patients rely on anti-viral drugs to sustain and prolong their life.
But an increasing number have developed resistance to the drugs.
"A lot of
HIV-infected people have take months and some even over three years of
first-line medicines. It seems to be a distant dream for them to have newer,
better drugs."
According to the Ministry of Health, the Chinese mainland had
31,143 HIV-AIDS patients as of September. About 20,400 have received free
government medicines as most of them live in poverty.
The fourth-line
anti-AIDS medicines have been developed by foreign companies. But constrained by
intellectual property rights regulations, Chinese pharmaceutical companies are
prohibited from making copies of foreign second-line or more advanced
drugs.
Expensive imported medicines have driven China's anti-AIDS campaign
into a dilemma. It's difficult to offer cheaper and better drugs to AIDS
patients, who in turn, if they haven't received free government drugs, cannot
afford treatment for their disease.
Zhao Aiping, 36, is a farmer from Henan
Province. She was infected with HIV after selling blood in the mid-1990s. She
developed AIDS symptoms in 2002. Her husband is also living with the
virus.
The couple used to earn more than 10,000 yuan (US$1,250) a year and
were considered wealthy by local standards. But the couple has gradually drained
their savings and now rely on government subsidies to get by.
Worse still,
Zhao was told by doctors she would become drug-resistant and needed better
anti-viral medicines.
"It costs about 10,000 yuan a month to buy imported
second-line medicines. We don't have the money," Zhao said.
As multinationals
own the copyright of more than 20 kinds of anti-viral medicines, Chinese
manufacturers can not make generic copies.
In July and September, a number of
HIV patients gathered in Beijing and Kunming, Yunnan Province. They called on
multinationals to cut the prices of anti-AIDS medicines.
"If international
makers refuse to lower the prices, we hope the government will issue `mandatory
permits' to domestic companies and help more patients get better treatment,"
Zhao said.
Xinhua
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