Bristol-Myers, Baylor Plan AIDS Initiative

By THERESA AGOVINO
The Associated Press
Monday, June 27, 2005; 1:01 AM

NEW YORK -- Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. and the Baylor College of Medicine are launching a $40 million initiative to treat children with AIDS in the developing world, an effort that includes a "pediatric AID corps" to send doctors to Africa to treat about 80,000 children over the next five years.

In addition, Bristol-Myers plans to lower the price of two pediatric formulations of its HIV medicines in the world's least developed countries.

Africa will be the major focus of the initiative, which was announced Monday. Of the estimated 2.2 million children under the age of 15 living with HIV worldwide, about 1.9 million reside in sub-Saharan Africa, according to Bristol-Myers.

Houston-based Baylor and Bristol-Myers are planning to send as many as 250 pediatricians to Africa. The doctors will also train local health professionals to treat children with AIDS.

Baylor will spend $10 million on the program that will be used to pay up to $40,000 in student loans for the participating doctors, who will sign up for one or two years. It will also train the physicians before they leave.

New York-based Bristol-Myers will donate $30 million to the initiative. A portion of the money will be used to pay the doctors an annual stipend of $30,000 plus living expenses. The first doctors should arrive next summer.

"There aren't enough doctors that specialize in children in Africa," said Phangisile Mtshali, the director of Bristol-Myers' AIDS initiatives for Southern Africa. "We need to get doctors more comfortable in treating children."

One AIDS expert called the program's effect limited.

"Proposing treating 80,000 children over five years isn't much. That is 3 percent of the children who will die during that time," said Dr. Paul Zeitz, executive director of the advocacy group, Global AIDS Alliance. "We are at a point where small scale programs aren't enough. We need to get up to scale."

In addition, Bristol-Myers agreed to cut the price of AIDS drug Zerit by 44 percent to 85 cents a day and Videx by 90 percent to 15 cents a day.

Zeitz said if Bristol-Myers really wanted to make a difference they would fund more medical schools in Africa and allow generic companies to license their drugs to bring down costs.

Bristol-Myers spokeswoman Becky Taylor said the company doesn't enforce its patents in Africa so generic companies are free to make copies of its drugs and combine them with other treatments.

"We agree the problem is immense, and we hope others will join us in the effort," Taylor said.

Bristol-Myers is also building four children's clinics, including one in Uganda and the other in Burkina Faso. Both should open next summer. The other two clinics won't be in Africa but in other regions where AIDS is a problem. China and Russia are under consideration.

Bristol-Myers has already built one children's clinic in Botswana and expects to open sites in Lesotho and Swaziland later this year. Baylor runs the African clinics.

The latest initiative is part of a program that Bristol-Myers launched in 1999 called Secure the Future, which funds programs to alleviate AIDS in Africa. With the most recent pledge, the company donated $150 million to programs in Africa.