BANGKOK, July 14 (AFP) - Thailand will make low-cost anti-retroviral drugs available on its national health scheme for the more than half a million people in the kingdom living with HIV/AIDS, the health ministry said Thursday.
Officials attending Thailand's 10th national seminar on AIDS hailed the move as "the first of its kind in the world".
"Social and health welfare benefits for AIDS patients is to become part of the state program from October 2005," the ministry said in a statement.
"Anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs) are to be included in the benefit package of the universal health care coverage."
Thailand already distributes the drugs free to about 50,000 low-income people living with HIV under a pilot scheme.
A ministry official confirmed to AFP that the drugs, produced generically in Thailand, would be available as part of the health scheme, which allows the poor to receive hospital treatment for 30 baht (75 cents) per visit.
The drugs will be available primarily to those whose CD4 T cell count has dropped below 200, the official said.
CD4 T cells are those which the HIV virus hijacks in order to replicate itself and which it wrecks in the process, eventually exposing the body to opportunistic disease.
More than one million people in Thailand have become infected with HIV, the virus which causes AIDS, since the first case was reported here 21 years ago. About half a million have died.
Thailand responded swiftly to the disease in the late 1980s after a period of denial, but experts warned last year that it had lost its momentum in the AIDS fight.
Experts at this week's seminar warned that rapidly changing patterns of behavior including unsafe sex were exposing millions of Thai teenagers to greater health risks.
"Thai teenagers were engaged in sexual intercourse quite young, below 17 years on average. Their sex encounters became brief and superficial with condom use among 25-30 percent of them," the ministry said in its statement.
A year ago Thailand hosted the 15th International AIDS Conference at which local activists demanded ARVs be included in the kingdom's health scheme.
Last October Thailand vowed to boost production of locally made cheap "copycat" anti-AIDS drugs amid an uproar by US corporations which argue the drugs break patents and deprive the firms of money needed to research new anti-AIDS drugs.
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