ABC World News Tonight 3/7/01

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HEADLINE: AFRICA'S AIDS EPIDEMIC AND DRUG COMPANIES TRYING TO STOP GENERIC FORMS OF AIDS DRUGS

We're going to focus tonight on one of the profound questions of our time. When millions of people in one part of the world are wasting away from disease, is the rest of the world obligated to help in any way it can? Today in Africa, 25 million people are infected with the AIDS virus, 5500 hundred people are buried every day and there are medicines that might prolong, if not save, many of those lives. In Africa, the drugs are just plain unaffordable, in part, because there are so few inexpensive or generic versions. The government of South Africa wants to import generic drugs, but this week thirty-nine drug companies have gone to court to stop them. This is about patents and profits. First, here's ABC's Deborah Amos.

Ms. MIRRYENA DEEB (South African Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association): We are not in any way trying to hinder access to affordable medicines, including HIV/AIDS, in South Africa.

AMOS: (VO) The drug companies, which have been met by large protests at the courthouse, want very much to be seen as part of the solution. This week, under pressure, they started a price war, slashing the prices of several AIDS drugs they sell to Africa to about one tenth the US price. But the companies are desperate to stop the sale of generic versions of their drugs. They say their business is at stake when their patents are violated.

Ms. JUDITH BELLO (Executive Vice President, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America): We need to continue patent protection to stimulate private sector investment and innovation.

AMOS: This is what the drug companies are afraid of. If parents are not protected an drug companies are forced to provide cheaper AIDS drugs for all of Africa, then what's to stop Russia or China or people with AIDS in the United States from demanding the same price?

Mr. MARK GROOMBRIDGE (Cato Institute): If today they're able to do that for AIDS drugs, why tomorrow wouldn't they be able to do it for cancer or heart disease drugs?

AMOS: (VO) But what about the moral argument? Do the drug companies have a responsibility to save lives or at least prolong them?

Ms. BELLO: The industry alone can never be a solution to a problem that is vastly larger than medicines.

AMOS: (VO) 'Don't blame us,' they say, 'blame governments, blame international organizations, not private companies.' But the companies are feeling the pressure. Deborah Amos, ABC News, New York.

HEADLINE: MILLIONS OF AFRICANS INFECTED WITH AIDS VIRUS CANNOT AFFORD AIDS MEDICATIONS

Now, you heard Deborah begin her report by saying that this week the AIDS crisis was reduced to a legal argument. Let's get away from the courtroom. ABC's Jim Wooten reports from Malawi.

(VO) In this face, in this moment a mirror of Africa's anguish. He's just been told he has AIDS...

WOOTEN: (VO) ...and he's lead away without hope from his diagnosis to his eventual death in a teaming hospital where almost everyone is staring into the same empty future, including the doctors.

Dr. ERIC BORGESTAN (Queen Elizabeth Hospital): They are not available to us, no.

WOOTEN: (VO) This is Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Malawi's largest with nine hundred beds and nearly three thousand patients.

(OC) Seventy percent of the patients here in the medical wards are HIV positive and in the country's population of 10 million more than a million people are infected, yet fewer than a hundred are getting the AIDS medications so common in the West.

(VO) The exact number is 31, treated in this sparkling private hospital, either government officials or business executives and their families with enough money or medical insurance to afford six hundred dollars a month for the three-drug cocktail. Thirty-one out of a million.

Dr. WESLEY SANGALA (Malawi Ministry of Health): No, they are bad numbers, but then it's not surprising.

WOOTEN: (VO) Not at all surprising given the brutal poverty here. Two hundred dollars is the average annual income. So most Malawians with AIDS, indeed most Africans with AIDS, will die without the medicine that would prolong their lives simply because the pharmaceutical companies price them far beyond their reach and the reach or the will of their governments.

In the meantime, Malawi's most profitable enterprise these days is a shop like this one. Even in tiny villages ten or twelve AIDS funerals every week keep the local carpenter busy. The cost: one dollar per coffin. Jim Wooten, ABC News, Blantyre, Malawi.