Air Ticket Tax for AIDS Fight Should Benefit Children: France

France's plan to levy a tax on airline tickets to help fund the battle against AIDS should focus primarily on helping children infected with the disease, junior Social Security Minister Phillipe Bas said Friday on the sidelines of a G-8 meeting in Moscow.

"The French initiative to create an international facility for access to drugs provided by a tax on airline tickets will be dedicated primarily to giving children suffering from AIDS access to pediatric drugs," said Bas. "At present HIV-positive children are being provided only with a share of the drugs used for adults, clearly a big handicap in treating children."

With an annual projected revenue of €200 million ($250 million US), the tax will be used to run a central medicine-buying facility that will facilitate cheaper and easier access to drugs. France will institute the tax beginning in July.

Bas suggested other revenue from airline ticket taxes could be used to help pay for costly second-line antiretrovirals. "In treating patients with antiretrovirals, there are first-line drugs which remain effective for some years but later the development of the illness renders them less effective and the treatment has to be continued with second-line antiretrovirals," said Bas. "The price of antiretrovirals has already come down a great deal but that's not true of second-line antiretrovirals," he noted.

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