Drug company backs Africa's war on AIDS
13 May 1999 (See Nature Volume 399 page 96)
[WASHINGTON]
A leading maker of AIDS drugs announced plans last week to take the corporate lead on another front: fighting the disease in southern Africa. The $18.3 billion company, Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS), will give $100 million over the next five years to a programme of clinical research, physician training and AIDS education, prevention and treatment.
The countries involved are South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Lesotho and Swaziland, where HIV infection rates in adults are as high as 25 per cent. Most of the work will target women and children. "We feel a moral obligation to take action against this grave situation," says Charles Heimbold, BMS's chairman and chief executive officer.
According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, Heimbold began promoting the idea after a dinner-party conversation last year with Kofi Annan, the United Nations secretary general, who exhorted him to do something about AIDS in Africa,.
Some argue that more than altruism may be playing a role in the company's generosity. The move comes as governments in Africa and elsewhere are threatening to ignore drug-company patents on expensive AIDS drugs, including several made by BMS.
Later this month, the World Health Assembly, the governing body of the World Health Organisation, will vote on a new policy that may encourage third-world governments to override AIDS drug patents and license home-based companies to make cheap generic versions.
"There's certainly an awareness on the part of companies like Bristol-Myers Squibb that they are vulnerable to criticism on the pricing issue. That plays a role in their taking positive steps like this," says Daniel Zingale, the executive director of AIDS Action, a Washington-based lobbying group. Still, Zingale says the BMS action is courageous. "When you do something of this magnitude and you're first, you are subject to criticism."
But Mark Ahn, BMS's senior director of operations and planning, who is team leader on the Africa project, denies that intellectual property concerns are playing a role in BMS's largesse. "We felt it was a moral imperative. It has nothing to do with any of the other pending issues or disagreements we may have on intellectual property."
MEREDITH WADMAN
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Nature © Macmillan Publishers Ltd 1999 Registered No. 785998 England.