United Press International - Thursday, May 6, 1999

At a news conference, company officers said the money would be used for research and community outreach in five countries in southern Africa where HIV/AIDS is ravaging the populations. The drug money will be used primarily to educate infected women and children and train doctors.

Between 16 and 32 percent of the people in Botswana, Namibia, Lesotho and Swaziland are infected with HIV. In South Africa, 8 to 16 percent of the adults carry the disease and in the past two years, the number of infected people there has doubled to nearly 4 million. The infection rate is growing by 20 percent a year in the region.

The program, "Secure The Future: Care and Support for Women and Children with HIV/AIDS," will provide research, education and patient help in areas hardest hit by the disease. The program intends to:

--Generate new data through research to be used by the African medical community and policymakers.

--Provide fellowships to as many as 100 African physicians to be administered by the Baylor College of Medicine in Texas. Other health care professionals will receive local training. U.S. physicians will earn fellowships to teach and provide care in the five countries.

--Give better care to the hundreds of thousands of children orphaned by AIDS in the five countries.

--Supply home-care, health education and counseling on the importance of HIV/AIDS screening to pregnant women and those of child-bearing age.

"Bristol-Meyers has a long-standing commitment to the importance of treatment and care of individuals with HIV," Don Hayden, president of worldwide medicines group for Bristol-Meyers, told United Press International this morning. "The scale of the human misery in southern Africa motivated us into action. We want to create a model program and help Africans find solutions. We intend to draw others into this program, build momentum in order to have a massive impact on the fight against AIDS."

"Secure The Future" is a cooperation among the five African governments, UNAIDS (The United Nations AIDS program), Harvard AIDS Institute, Baylor College of Medicine, Morehouse School of Medicine, The Medical University of Southern Africa (MEDUNSA) and other African schools of medicine.

This cooperative effort came about following a dinner in New York City last December. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan was seated next to Bristol-Meyers Squibb Chairman Charles Heimbold Jr. and challenged him and other AIDS drug makers to do more about the growing AIDS problem in Africa.

According to Hayden, this challenge "immediately galvanized us into action. 'Secure The Future' program is the results."

Bristol-Meyers makes three top HIV/AIDS treatment drugs.

"Secure The Future" will not offer discounted or free drugs to HIV/AIDS carriers. "This is not the purpose of the program," Bristol- Meyers Vice President of International Policy Barry Scott told UPI. "Giving away or discounting drugs does not address the real issues in the pandemic in this part of the world. What's needed are more trained medical professionals and more education on the prevention of the disease. Africans want the tools to solve their own problem. This will help them."
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