Zambia Ready to Start AIDS Drug Trials

PHARCO, a drug company producing AIDS medicines in Zambia, is set to begin clinical trials on 28 HIV-positive volunteers, the Zambia Daily Mail reported Tuesday. Full production of antiretroviral drugs will begin after the three-month trials conclude, the newspaper said. "The plant will be able to produce a quantity of at least 150,000 treatments per year," said Johan Richter, general manager for PHARCO, which is 28 percent government-owned. "Production capacity will be increased when and if required," Richter said.

Zambia is the first southern African country outside South Africa to produce AIDS drugs. Health Minister Brian Chituwo has repeatedly said he would change regulations to allow Zambia to share the medicines with its neighbors.

Currently, about 10,000 HIV-positive Zambians are receiving AIDS drugs. President Levy Mwanawasa promised in October to increase that number to about 100,000 people by the end of 2005.

But unless rural health facilities are upgraded, it will be difficult for the drugs to properly be administrated, said Rosemary Musonda, acting director of the National AIDS Council. Current distribution is confined to large government and church hospitals in urban centers where physicians, nurses, lab technicians and clinical officers have been adequately trained.

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