Success in AIDS Fight in Brazil Linked to Cheap Drugs

Cheap retroviral treatments secured from the big drug companies is the key to Brazil's success in fighting AIDS.

That fight goes on today, with Brazil also manufacturing its own generic anti-AIDS medicine.

The strategy has created friction with the pharmaceutical groups investing billions in new anti-virals -- but it has also proved successful in this vast country, population 190 million, which has a third of Latin America's HIV-positive patients.

Around 32,000 new HIV/AIDS carriers are detected every year, a proportion that has stayed roughly the same for the past two decades.

That in itself is a triumph for a nation which was once predicted to be on the same path as parts of Africa where AIDS transmission has exploded, creating a veritable crisis.

The director of the Brazilian health ministry's AIDS program, Mariangela Simao, told AFP that in 2002, the prevelance rate of HIV/AIDS per 100,000 people was 22.2 cases. In 2006, it was 17.5, "which confirms a slightly lower trend," she said.

The government, though, is determined to push back further against the disease, said Simao, who will be attending an international AIDS conference in Mexico next week.

There are currently 620,000 people with HIV living in Brazil, or 0.61 percent of the population between 15 and 49. Of those, 190,000 with AIDS receive free treatment.

The health ministry spent 820 million dollars last year on its AIDS program, of which 620 million dollars went to paying for retroviral medicine.