Fight against AIDS in Brazil is more expensive

ARVs cost up to eight times more that in South Africa, whose GNP per capita is three times higher

What's the difference between the treatment of a brasilian aids patient and a South African one? In Brazil, where the government respect international patent and is obliged by the Constitution to provide the drugs to all HIV positive people in need, one tablet of anti-retroviral cost up to eight times more that in South Africa. The distortion is the result of a price policy of big laboratories. Purchasing power of the population, for instance, is not a criteria. The Gross National Product (GNP) per capita in Brazil (US$ 3,3 thousand) is one third of the one of South Africa (US$ 10,7 thousand). But here, every tablet of anti-retroviral Tenofovir, of the laboratory Gilead Science, cost US$ 7. In South Africa, and in 90 other countries, the same tablet cost US $ 0,86. A survey of the World Health Organization (WHO) concluded that the humanitarian price of the product, including rewards of the laboratory, would be US$ 1,5. Tenofovir is expensive, because, although its raw material is well known for a long time (discovered in 1985), it is still protected by patents.

Another Antiretroviral, the complex Ritonavir/Lopinavir, produced by Laborat