AIDS: From prevention to care, Govt moves a step forward

Drugs for the dreaded illness will now be available in Govt hospitals, the Union Health Minister announced on the eve of World AIDS Day.

In a major initiative to tackle the dreaded AIDS, Government on Sunday announced that it will provide drugs for the disease in Government hospitals as pharmaceutical industries pledged to lower their prices if incentives were provided.

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Addressing a press conference on the eve of World AIDS Day here, Union Health Minister Sushma Swaraj said that the programme to provide AIDS medicines in Government hospitals would first begin in the six high-prevalence states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Manipur and Nagaland.

The programme is expected to begin from April next and about one lakh AIDS patients are likely to access the drugs through Government hospitals and ante-natal clinics in the first year.

Swaraj said that representatives of pharmaceutical industry requested that they be provided with fiscal incentives structure equivalent to the incentives available to them through the Clinton Foundation.
 
The minister said that the industry agreed not only to bring down the prices to that of Clinton Foundation but also to lower them further for domestic consumption.