Chicago Tribune - April 27, 2002
Bruce Japsen, Tribune staff reporter

Although Abbott shareholders resoundingly defeated a resolution that would have put the company's AIDS treatments within the $300 to $400 annual budget of an African family, White said the drugmaker will ease costs. However, he declined to say by how much or when the cuts would be implemented.

"We will revisit our costs," White told more than 2,300 shareholders at the company's annual meeting at its North Chicago headquarters. "We will be below cost. We will lower costs."

Abbott already is selling two treatments to African countries at cost. The price of the protease inhibitors, which are used in cocktails hailed for suppressing the HIV virus, is 90 percent lower than what U.S. patients pay. In the U.S., each drug costs about $7,000 a year per patient, but African countries began getting them last year for about $650 a year per patient.

Last year, Abbott joined some of the world's largest drugmakers in lowering prices following an international uproar over the industry's pricing of drugs used to treat HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Health experts estimate that 25 million people are infected with the virus in sub-Saharan Africa, but say those people cannot afford treatments.

Despite last year's drastic price reductions, several religious groups have been critical of efforts by Abbott and other drugmakers. The Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsi-bility, which was a sponsor of the shareholder resolution, said Abbott and other drugmakers have not done enough to educate Africans or deliver drugs to patients in need.

Sister Regina Murphy, program director for the center, said Abbott would be effective if it provided its AIDS drugs to African nations "pretty close" to free. Abbott said 96 percent of shareholders voted against the resolution.

"We believe Abbott needs to do more," Sister Doris Gormley of the Jesuit National Ministries, a member of the Interfaith group, told White. "Availability is not accessibility."

Yet White said even free drugs would not be enough to solve the problem because most African countries do not have the infrastructure to safely and effectively administer the drugs. Health-care workers are either in short supply or do not have proper training to administer AIDS treatments, which require constant monitoring by physicians, Abbott officials said.

"This is much more complicated than just drugs," said White, who has spent time in African nations ravaged by AIDS, including a trip earlier this month to Tanzania and Uganda. "This is a massive, massive problem."

Abbott shareholders approved naming Deloitte & Touche its new auditors, replacing Andersen. Abbott had used Andersen for 39 years before it decided to make a change after Andersen was indicted in the wake of the Enron scandal.

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