For them to act most effectively, they are usually supplied as a cocktail of three drugs. In the private sector, triple antiretroviral therapy costs R27000 a year, expected to rise to R35000 in 2010. Without antiretrovirals the cost of care this year would be about R24000, rising to about R26000 in 2010. To provide the drugs in the public sector would be proportionately far more expensive with fewer resources and much more disease. However, the review also points to the use of antiretrovirals to prevent the transmission of the virus from pregnant HIVpositive mothers to their babies.
Sufficient evidence exists, though, that prevention efforts can be successful.
Antiretrovirals were under the spotlight yesterday at a news conference of the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers' Association, which, with its member companies, will be in court next week to stop government enacting legislation it hopes will reduce the cost of medicines. No 90 of 1997 in fact deals with all medicines, but international moves by pressure groups to force down the price of antiretrovirals, along with government's own ambivalence about these drugs, has made them the focus of the trial. Association CEO Mirryena Deeb said the association and its members, all research-based multinational pharmaceutical companies, supported government's aims in its legislation, but believed the law was constructed badly. Samantha Bolton of Medicins Sans Fronti res thanked Deeb for her honesty, invited her to a news conference the following day where some of her assertions would be answered, and distributed information to the media at the conference. A programme of demonstrations, media conferences and similar events has been set up by Medicins Sans Fronti res, Oxfam, the Treatment Action Campaign and others which will be joined by observers from organisations that are putting pressure on multinationals to drop the prices of anti-AIDS drugs.