November 14, 2007

Reuters reports that Brazil's "policy of haggling long and hard for lower prices for lifesaving AIDS drugs" (is that what you call threatening to break drug patents?) has saved $1 billion in government spending from 2001-05.

Amy Nunn and colleagues at the Harvard School of Public Health analyzed the costs of individual AIDS drugs in Brazil and found that generic drugs produced in Brazil were usually more expensive than similar drugs made elsewhere.

"Brazil's AIDS treatment program has been cited widely as the developing world's largest and most successful AIDS treatment program," they wrote in their report, published in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Medicine.

Brazil isn't a wealthy nation, but it isn't a poor one either, with a GDP of about $1 trillion, and an annual defense budget (as of 2005) of over $13 billion.

Brazil could afford to pay more for AIDS drugs, but doesn't because it's easy (and popular) to bash the companies that make those "lifesaving AIDS drugs."

Or to put it another way, Brazil - all in the name of "public health" - has given companies 1 billion fewer reasons to invest in AIDS research

Posted by Paul Howard at November 14, 2007 03:08 PM