Cheap AIDS drug, China the new entrant

China has started producing five drugs that can be used in four different cocktails to treat AIDS patients, whose numbers are rising alarmingly.

The State Food and Drug Administration said if the patients use domestic medicines, their expenditure for the treatment of AIDS will be around 3,000 yuan ($362) annually, or one-tenth the cost of using imported medicines.

"This substantial reduction is definitely worth a salute, especially for a country with 840,000 carriers of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, and 80,000 full-blown cases of the disease," the state-run China Daily said.

Now that the prices of the pills are more reasonable, it is hoped the treatment can cover more patients, it said.

In April 2003, the Chinese Government launched a project under which AIDS patients in poverty-stricken provinces could receive free drugs, but the dropout rate reached 20 per cent after six months.

A recent report by the United Nations cautioned China about the rapidly spreading HIV/AIDS disease in the country.

"HIV/AIDS is only now beginning to spread rapidly, and the government has taken action to contain the disease. Only if efforts intensify, however, will China stand a chance of reversing the spread of HIV/AIDs by 2015," the report, 'Millennium Development Goals, China's Progress', said.

"If China does not take up the fight against AIDS seriously and actively, there could be up to 10 million people living with HIV/AIDS by 2010," UN Resident Coordinator and UNDP Resident Representative in China, Khalid Malik said.

With up to one million people already infected with HIV/AIDS in China, the epidemic will quickly worsen if not checked, health experts warned.