BEIJING, June 29 (AFP) - China is close to inking a deal with pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline which will make a key AIDS drug available to poor patients in the country this year, a top health official said Tuesday.
The drug 3TC, considered a key component of the most effective cocktail therapies used in AIDS-stricken developing countries, is currently unaffordable for patients in China, which is battling a fast-spreading AIDS epidemic.
But Vice Minister of Health Wang Longde told reporters that Glaxo had agreed to sell the drug to the Chinese government at a reduced price.
"We will soon sign an agreement with GlaxoSmithKline. We estimate the drug will be put into use in the third quarter," said Wang.
"As for the price of the drug, I'm sorry I can't reveal it. It's a trade secret."
The agreement could be significant as China's HIV/AIDS cases are growing at a rapid rate, with the United Nations predicting they could reach 10 million by 2010.
It could also bring more effective treatment to an estimated hundreds of thousands of poor farmers infected with HIV from selling blood.
China began providing free anti-retroviral drugs to some of the farmers last July, aiming to eventually reach all poor AIDS patients, but due to patent restrictions it has been able to manufacture and distribute only older drugs with serious side effects.
The agreement between China and Glaxo will be the first success by Beijing to convince pharmaceutical companies to reduce their prices for China, said Mao Qunan, deputy director general of the health ministry's department of general administration.
Glaxo, which holds the patent on 3TC, had hesitated to grant a preferential price to Beijing because the drug is also effective in treating hepatitis B, which affects far more people in China than HIV/AIDS, Mao said.
The company feared losing the hepatitis market.
To alleviate these fears, the Chinese government itself will purchase the drug at the cheaper price and use it only on AIDS patients.
"If it's used for hepatitis B, the drug will still be sold at market price in China," Mao said.
Glaxo officials declined to give details.
"Negotiations are going very smoothly. What we can say is there will be results soon," said spokeswoman Lilian Xiao.
Health officials said China must continue negotiating with pharmaceutical companies to reduce the price of more drugs.
"We only have two to three treatment therapies right now," Mao said. "The more drugs become available, the better it is for the patients."
The United States Food and Drug Administration has approved 21 types of AIDS drugs, but only a limited number are available in China.
The lower-quality drugs China provides has contributed to many quitting treatment because of the side-effects, leading to fears the patients could develop a dangerous resistance to AIDS drugs.
Of the more than 7,000 people in China's free-drugs program around 1,000 have stopped taking the medicine, Wang said.
China expects to provide drugs to 50,000 patients by the end of 2005.
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