[Ip-health] Reuters on Nigerian generic ARV program

[Mike Palmedo]

http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsArticle.jhtml?type=healthNews&storyID=4376029&section=news

Nigeria Orders $4 Mln of AIDS Drugs to End Shortage
Tue 17 February, 2004 17:08

LAGOS (Reuters) - Nigeria said on Tuesday it was importing
antiretroviral drugs worth nearly $4 million to end a four-month
shortage threatening an ambitious anti-AIDS plan.

Health Minister Eyitayo Lambo said the first batch had arrived in
Africa's most populous country and was being distributed to the 25
HIV/AIDS treatment centers, many of which ran out of supplies in September.

He blamed the shortage on "over-enrolment of patients" in a pilot
program and a lack of money.

In 2002 Nigeria launched Africa's biggest AIDS control program aimed at
distributing cheap generic drugs from India to an initial 10,000 adults
and 5,000 children at a subsidized monthly cost of 1,000 naira ($7) per
person.

UNAIDS and health ministry figures indicate that around 3.5 million of
Nigeria's 130 million people have the HIV virus.

At a news conference in the capital Abuja, Lambo said the fresh
supplies, costing 500 million naira ($3.7 million), should last 11
months but that the government was trying to widen the pilot project.

Campaigners and HIV patients have complained their treatment was
threatened by a shortage of the drugs that are designed to give a longer
lease on life.

Many HIV carriers have resorted to the open market where the drugs cost
many times more. In the oil-rich country two-thirds of people live on
less than $1 a day.