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BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) - U.S.-based drug giant Merck & Co. said Monday that it will include Romania, where the overwhelming majority of people suffering from AIDS are children, on a list of nations eligible for AIDS drugs at sharply reduced prices.
A company official said Merck is slashing the price of two drugs in Romania because the disease has hit children so hard and because the impoverished nation can't afford drug therapy for AIDS patients at regular prices.
``We cut prices by more than 80 percent because in Romania only 40 percent of AIDS and HIV infected patients receive drug therapy,'' said Adrian Caretu, the local manager of Merck Sharp & Dohme, the New Jersey-based company's Romanian subsidiary.
Romania, still suffering from the denial policy of former Communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, says it has 6,270 HIV patients, including more than 5,600 children. By government count, 2,128 Romanian children have died of AIDS in the past decade.
In most other countries, the vast majority of AIDS sufferers are adults.
Ceausescu, who was toppled and summarily executed during the 1989 anti-communist revolt, ignored the existence of AIDS in Romania. No measures were taken to prevent the spread of HIV under his rule.
Only a small percentage of the children with AIDS contracted the disease from their mothers. Most of them were infected by transfusions of blood containing the virus and by injections with used syringes.
Petru Calistru, who heads the Victor Babes Hospital for Infectious Diseases, praised Merck's plan and urged other pharmaceutical companies to follow suit.
``This offer is important, but if it is not followed by other drug makers along with subsidies from the Romanian government, it won't really improve the situation,'' he said.
Of the 1,000 HIV patients currently registered with Calistru's hospital in Bucharest, only 208 are receiving drug therapy.
The average monthly salary in Romania is about $100, and treatment for HIV patients was interrupted several times last year because hospitals struggling with debt could not pay the drug suppliers on time.
Humanitarian aid agencies have expressed increasing concern in recent months that the cost of AIDS medicines has put them out of reach for governments and patients in poor countries where the large majority of victims live.
Facing criticism and legal action, some companies have moved to reduce prices for developing countries. Earlier this month, Merck said it would reduce prices for sub-Saharan African countries where nearly 70 percent of the world's HIV-positive population lives.
In Romania, Merck said two AIDS drugs will be available at about one-tenth their U.S. prices to help Romanian hospitals extend drug therapy to more patients.
Stocrin will be sold for $500 per patient a year, compared with $4,700 in the United States for an equivalent, Sustiva. Crixivan, which costs a U.S. patient $6,000 a year, will be sold in Romania and other developing countries for $600 a year, Caretu said.
The therapy costs half as much for children as for adults.
The new Romanian government that took office late last year
pledged in January to cut import duties and value-added taxes on
AIDS-related medicine and materials, but so far has not made good
on these promises.
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