Africa: Pharmaceutical Executive Urges Corporate Donors Not to Forget AIDS Victims

While global attention is focused on the Indian Ocean tsunami catastrophe, corporate donors should not forget the millions infected or affected by HIV/AIDS, Bristol-Myers Squibb CEO Peter Dolan said Friday. Dolan was reviewing a BMS-funded treatment support program in Ladysmith in rural KwaZulu-Natal. Dolan estimated some 9,000 people worldwide die of AIDS every day -- many of them in Africa. "That's the equivalent of having a tsunami coming at us about every three weeks," he said. "We clearly need to keep the world's attention focused on the problem."

BMS has contributed $5 million toward tsunami assistance, and since 1999 has channeled $120 million to fighting AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa, issuing more than 170 grants for research, treatment and care in nine southern and western countries in Africa. Under international pressure on the drug industry, BMS joined other firms to cut the prices of its AIDS medicines for the poorest countries and issued some limited licenses to producers of generic drugs.

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