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 November 13, 2001
Jeremy Page

But her father's face is lined with anxiety as he struggles to find affordable treatment in China for the girl, infected with the HIV virus by a blood transfusion six years ago.

As China opened its first national conference on AIDS and HIV Tuesday, Zhang Jianqi and his daughter sought help at the few clinics in Beijing specializing in AIDS treatment.

But they, like many AIDS victims in China, found treatment scarce and prohibitively expensive.

A year's course of the cocktail of AIDS drugs used in the West costs $10,000 in China -- a fortune even for Beijing's prospering middle class, let alone a farmer like Zhang.

The same treatment would cost about $300 in India.

"If your child can be looked after properly, she will be able to stay alive," said Zhang, 34. "But in my case the main thing is that I don't have enough money to pay for my child to see a doctor."

"Society must provide some support and help for AIDS patients," he said. "They should not be ignored because of this disease. They are people too."

Health experts say the short supply and exorbitant cost of AIDS drugs in China are symptoms of the government's slow response to an HIV problem which the United Nations reckons could soon become a major epidemic.

But they are aggravated by China's desire to prove it can protect foreign patents after it joins the World Trade Organization (WTO).

DRUGS TOO EXPENSIVE

"Our assessment is that very few people with AIDS who need treatment have actually access to effective treatment," said United Nations AIDS chief Peter Piot.

"On the one hand, probably most people don't know they are infected in China," he said. "Secondly, the drugs are too expensive."

Part of the problem is that Beijing has yet to negotiate a deal with Western pharmaceutical firms holding patents for AIDS drugs to sell their products cheaper in China, Piot said.

Some Western drugs firms have struck deals with developing countries to sell AIDS medicine at or below cost and to help fund AIDS prevention and treatment projects.

"The price of the drugs in China must come down," Piot said. "If it was possible in African countries, in Latin America, in the Caribbean, it should be possible in China as well."

"But it is the government's responsibility to take this on and to make sure that mechanisms are put in place so that there are discussions, negotiations with the companies."

Shen Jie of the Health Ministry's disease control department said the ministry was negotiating with Western patent holders to bring the price of AIDS drugs closer to that in India.

"They said we should make efforts from both sides -- 'we can reduce the price but you should cut taxes'," she said.

TENTATIVE DEAL

Negotiators at WTO talks this week clinched a tentative deal to allow countries suffering pandemics such as AIDS to skirt pharmaceutical patents to produce or buy generic drugs.

But Shen said China had no immediate plan to produce its own versions of the drugs.

"Not now," she said. "The first step is to talk to the pharmaceutical companies to reduce the price."

Despite widespread piracy of foreign medicine, China's domestic pharmaceutical firms have yet to produce generic drugs for the country's HIV carriers -- estimated at one million by the United Nations.

State media welcomed South Africa's landmark win in a court case against 39 of the world's most powerful drug firms this year over the rights to import cheaper versions of branded AIDS drugs and other medicines.

But officials have told Chinese pharmaceutical firms not to break Beijing's WTO commitments on intellectual property rights by copying foreign patents, according to state media.

Piot said Chinese pharmaceutical firms certainly had the know-how to develop their own generic AIDS drugs.

But people like Zhang and his daughter needed more than just drugs, he said. They need qualified medical staff and properly-equipped medical facilities.

And their greatest enemies are still ignorance and prejudice.

"I have not told anybody in the village she is infected," Zhang said.

"How could she live a normal life if I did?"

"They still think this disease is something monstrous."

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