The link between HIV and AIDs is very clear and accepted in scientific circles everywhere. Perhaps they wanted to draw attention to the abject poverty prevailing in their country and force the international community to look at that very generous offer made to them by the drug companies in that light. The drug firms are willing to offer the life saving medicine at an 85 per cent discount. But even this cash-strapped Africa finds very expensive. MSF says the drug industry's offer is comparable to that of an elephant giving birth to a mouse.
Drug companies feel threatened by such suggestions.
To begin with they feel it is an attempt to ride roughshod over their patents and they fear that it could encourage a flow back of cheap drugs into Western markets. But it is time the world and international trading bodies and drug companies realise that AIDs is threatening to wipe out the economically most active segment of the population of South Africa. Until richer countries accept that they will pay prices high enough to cover the cost of research and poor countries pay a little above the cost of manufacture, the impasse will continue and the MSF proposal is the only way out. In the case of vaccines this impasse has been breached. Radical rethinking is definitely the need of the hour.