Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2001. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2001. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Reuters NewMedia - Tuesday October 23, 2001
Steven Swindells
Drug company executives denied allegations by the ruling African National Congress government that the industry was campaigning to put pressure on Pretoria to buy drugs known as antiretrovirals that prolong the lives of people suffering from Aids.
Government spokesman Smuts Ngonyama, in a letter sent to a leading newspaper on Monday, accused the German firm Boehringer-Ingelheim of sponsoring the international pressure group Act-Up to increase public pressure on the government to buy their anti-AIDS drugs.
"It was a vicious letter, a huge blow in our face. It was out to destroy the reputation of the companies," said one industry official who declined to be named.
The volatile relations between Pretoria and the drug industry hit rock bottom earlier this year when 39 of the world's most powerful firms pulled out of a court case over their patent rights on AIDS drugs and other medicines.
Major firms have now offered African countries a range of price discounts on AIDS drugs, but South Africa has questioned the sustainability of the price offers and the ability of the health system to dispense the medicines.
In his letter on Monday, Ngonyama said: "Government is resisting pressure to provide to all and sundry highly toxic drugs that offer no hope of eradicating the virus."
MORE COURT ACTION ON THE HORIZON
Ngonyama also made reference in his letter to a forthcoming court case in which Pretoria is being challenged by the country's leading AIDS activist group Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) over its refusal to distribute Boehringer-Ingelheim's antiretroviral drug for mothers and their newborn babies.
"The motivation behind this attack is unclear but personally I feel it is linked to the TAC case," said one drug firm representative who declined to be named.
"Government is already trying to undermine their case, saying they are at the beck and call of nasty drug firms," the representative said.
South Africa's AIDS policy attracted worldwide criticism after President Thabo Mbeki questioned the causal link between HIV (Human Immuno-deficiency Virus) and AIDS.
The government has resisted the use of antiretrovirals -- which slow the replication of the virus -- despite having more people living with HIV-AIDS than any other country in the world.
The latest charge by the ANC reopened wounds that had been partly healed, drug industry sources said.
"There is no conspiracy between the drug companies and the activists. It has been invented," said Kevin McKenna, Boehringer-Ingelheim's managing director in South Africa.
"This company is not a sponsor of the activists involved in the court case...Any comment to the contrary is misleading and untrue," McKenna said. Europe's biggest drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline also denied the industry was working against Pretoria.
"There is no collusion between members of the pharmaceutical industry to force the government to take antiretrovirals," said Glaxo's medical director in South Africa, Peter Moore.
The ANC's latest attack on the drug industry came weeks after GlaxoSmithKline granted a licence to South African generic producer Aspen Pharmacare to manufacture its antiretroviral drugs.
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