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Germany Donates AIDS Drugs to Thailand
A German drug company has offered to donate an AIDS drug to Thailand over the next five years for treatment of mother-to-child transmission, the Thai News Agency (TNA) said on Sunday.
The drug, Nevirapine, is said to be able to drastically lower rates of mother-to-child HIV transmission and to have been proven more successful and easier to be used than Zidovudine (AZT).
The Ministry of Public Health's Department of Communicable Disease Control initially agreed to the offer of the company, Boehringer Ingelheim.
Under an initial agreement, Boehringer Ingelheim would provide Nevirapine to Thailand free of charge, but requested that Thailand include the drug in the National Essential Drug List (NED).
Drugs in the NED list are normally recommended by hospitals.
Director-General of the Department of Communicable Disease Control Somsong Rakpao was quoted as saying Nevirapine had received global approval for its safety and efficacy, and had been put on the essential-drug list of the World Health Organization.
About 20,000 out of 1 million pregnant women in Thailand are annually found HIV-positive.
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