Posted on 03/31/2005 2:05:28 PM PST by jb6
MOSCOW (AFP) - Russia has slashed the cost of AIDS treatment by more than two-thirds from 10,000 to 3,000 dollars after successful talks with multinational drug companies, Health Minister Mikhail Zurabov said.
AFP/File Photo
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The country, which by most accounts has close to one million people infected with HIV or suffering from AIDS, hopes to cut treatment costs further, by one-half, he said at an international meeting here on the disease.
"We are counting on reducing the costs to between 1,400 and 1,700 dollars (1,100-1,300 euros)," the minister, quoted by RIA Novosti news agency, said after negotiations with pharma companies to drop their prices for the vital drugs to fight AIDS.
Several hundred HIV positive people in Russia last December protested to press the government to make treatment free of charge.
Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Yukov stressed that the spread of HIV/AIDS was far more than just a health issue.
"In the current demographic situation it has become a question of strategic, social and economic security," he said.
The World Bank has estimated that the number of those infected with the AIDS virus in Russia could leap to 2.3 million by 2010, and top 5.4 million in 2020 if the government does not take concerted action.
In five years, Russian GDP could be 4.5 percent less than if AIDS did not exist, Jean-Louis Sarbib, a World Bank vice president, said, highlighting the "severe economic consequences."
Officially, there are some 305,000 HIV positive people registered in Russia, but experts estimate the true figure is at least three times higher.
there's a simple solution to their problem... ask judge Greer to become a Russian...
I suspect that this means that the rates of death due to other "official" causes will go up. My wife and I have a friend whp's a doc in Russia. She tells us all kinds of horror stories that conflict with the official facts.
I think the Russian Church would have a problem with that. Nothing like a president that can pardon a death row inmate from anywhere in the US but "can not" save an innocent woman's life.
Ouch!
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