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 - Monday December 3, 2001
The cost of a month's supply of the drugs "will go down again by April. They should go down to 2,000 Malawi kwacha ($30.20) or below," said Professor George Liwomba, chairman of the country's Antiretroviral Drug Committee.
It is the latest cut in a series of reductions by the government. In March, the price of a month's course of AIDS drugs was halved from $155 and reduced further in July to the current price of $40 or 2,650 kwacha a month.
The National AIDS Commission estimates that one in every 10 Malawians lives with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, and over 350,000 have died of the deadly disease since the first reported case in 1985.
Approximately 250 Malawians are infected every day with HIV, and life expectancy has dipped to 39 years from 48 years.
Liwomba said the government would continue to subsidise the cost of antiretrovirals to make them affordable, but analysts have said the projected price is still too high for the country's poor, most of whom live on less than a dollar a day.
Several of the world's biggest drug firms have cut prices on their AIDS drugs in a bid to make them more affordable in Africa, which has more than 28 million people living with the deadly disease.
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