Bill Clinton, the former US President, announced a deal with pharmaceutical companies yesterday to supply cut-price antiretroviral drugs to HIV-positive children in India, the country with the highest incidence of Aids.

Under the agreement between the Clinton Foundation HIV/Aids Initiative and Ranbaxy Laboratories and Cipla, two leading Indian drugs groups, 19 different antiretro- viral formulas will be distri- buted for as little as 45 cents (23p) a day, or $60 a year.

The price represents a 45 per cent discount on the best available market rate in developing countries for the drugs, which suppress the symptoms of the immunodeficiency virus, allowing sufferers to live relatively normal lives.

The deal is an extension of one struck with several Indian companies in January to supply discounted rapid HIV tests and anti-Aids drugs to adults. It will be administered under the umbrella of Unitaid, an international drug-purchase facility established in September by France, Brazil, Chile, Norway and Britain for the treatment of HIV-Aids, malaria and tuberculosis in countries most affected by these illnesses.

Unitaid will provide $35 million and the Clinton Foundation $15 million under a worldwide programme to treat an additional 100,000 HIV- positive children in 62 countries next year.

“Though the world has made progress in expanding HIV-Aids treatment to adults, children have been left behind. Only one in ten children who needs treatment is getting it,” Mr Clinton said on the eve of World Aids Day. “We have to make a new commitment that every child and adult who needs treatment should have access to the drugs.”

Flanked by Sonia Gandhi, the leader of the ruling Congress party, and Philippe Douste-Blazy, the French Foreign Minister, at one of the busiest hospitals in Delhi, the former president unveiled a plan by the Indian Government to treat 10,000 children by March by upgrading existing adult HIV and Aids treatment centres to include pediatric facilities.

“No child should have to live with HIV. Pediatric drugs should be affordable and easy to administer,” Mr Douste- Blazy, chairman of Unitaid, said. India has the largest number of HIV-Aids cases of any country, with 5.7 million people living with the virus, eclipsing the 5.5 million in South Africa, previously the worst-affected country.

Only 55,000 people, or 7 per cent of cases in India, are getting access to treatment, according to the United Nations’ Aids-monitoring body. By comparison Brazil, with 620,000 HIV-infected citizens, treats 83 per cent of those ill enough to require the drugs.

The Government is trying to curb the spread of the virus in India, where health education is poor, particularly in the rural areas, and aims to be treating 100,000 patients by the end of next year. Last year it spent 7 billion rupees (£80 million) on Aids, more than on any other illness. Mrs Gandhi said that six of the twenty-eight states were seriously affected, including Nagaland and Mani pur in the northeast, where transmission was largely through intravenous drug use.

Deadly toll

• 5.7m infections, in absolute numbers: India
  

• 0.6% antiretroviral treatment in Sudan and Somalia (of infected people treated)

  Source: WHO/United Nations

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