The pharmaceutical company Pfizer is to give away its expensive meningitis drug Difulcan to thousands of South Africans suffering from AIDS.
The company has been under pressure recently from the international group Doctors Without Borders to cut the price of Difulcan, which could ease the plight of 100,000 people who die of AIDS-related disease in the country each year.
Talks on how to distribute the drug are now under way with the South African government’s ministry of health, which estimates that 12 per cent of the 40 million population is HIV positive.
The South African pressure group Treatment Action Campaign, which has staged demonstrations outside Pfizer offices in Johannesburg and Cape Town, said the offer was ‘enormously significant’, and urged other drug companies, including Glaxo Wellcome, to follow Pfizer’s lead.
Pfizer sold around $1billion worth of Difulcan worldwide last year. It costs up to $17 a day and once treatment begins patients must take it for the rest of their lives.