NEW YORK, Jan 14 (AFP) - Former US president Bill Clinton announced here Wednesday an agreement with five major medical testing companies to lower the cost, for poor countries, of equipment used to detect HIV/AIDS.
The accord involves the Clinton Foundation and the companies Bayer Diagnostics, Beckman Coulter, BD, BioMerieux and Roche Diagnostics.
Under the deal, the price of the equipment sold to 16 countries in Africa and the Caribbean will be reduced by up to 80 percent.
Of the group, Mozambique, Rwanda, South Africa and Tanzania alone have 33 percent of Africa's AIDS and HIV sufferers.
The foundation estimates five million additional people will have access to cheap HIV/AIDS testing through 2008 thanks to the accord.
"By pushing down the price of HIV/AIDS medicine and laboratory tests, we are ramping up the ability of developing countries to treat millions of people, and to do so with the kind of quality of care that people with AIDS in the developed world usually receive," Clinton told reporters.
Last October, the former president announced an accord with four pharmaceutical companies -- three Indian and one South African -- allowing them to purchase anti-retroviral drugs at discount prices.
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