Jamaica first to sign for low-priced AIDS drugs under UN and Clinton initiatives

Jamaica is the first country to have signed an agreement to receive HIV/AIDS drugs and diagnostic tests at the reduced prices negotiated by the Clinton Foundation and paid for by the United Nations-initiated Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the Fund said today.

The Grant Agreement, worth $7.5 million over its first two-year phase, was signed in Geneva yesterday by Jamaican Minister of Health John Junor, according to the Fund.

Recipients of Global Fund and World Bank grants can access the prices negotiated by former US President Bill Clinton's foundation with five manufacturers of antiretroviral treatments (ARVs) as individual formulations and fixed-dose combinations and with five manufacturers of HIV/AIDS diagnostic tests.

The prices are available to the 16 countries in the Caribbean and Africa where the Clinton Foundation's HIV/AIDS Initiative operates.

With 22,000 infected people, Jamaica has the third-largest population living with the virus in the Caribbean, after Haiti and the Dominican Republic. The latter two have also been awarded Global Fund grants for HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention.

The Global Fund, initiated by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, is a unique global public-private partnership established to attract and disburse additional resources to prevent and treat AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.

Speaking from Kingston, Jamaica, Dr. Yitades Gebre, Executive Director of the National AIDS Programme, told the Fund, "In the last 15 years our program has been driven by education and prevention and in the last two years by treatment, but we were unable to scale up necessary life-saving interventions due to resource constraints.

"With this grant we can take our response to a much higher level of saving lives."