Rwanda to offer free generic AIDS drugs

Rwanda will use international aid to offer free generic drugs by year's end to 90,000 people infected with HIV and AIDS, a 20-fold increase in the number of people receiving treatment, an official said Thursday. The program would treat some 100,000 people by 2007 and would be funded by $85 million in aid from the U.S. government, the World Bank and the Geneva-based Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. "For us to attain this, we plan to start purchasing generic drugs because they are a lot more cheaper than the branded ones," said Louis Munyakazi, head of the Treatment Research for AIDS Center. About 13 percent of Rwanda's 8.5 million people - or about 1.1 million people - are infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. [more]

• Free drugs cut Taiwan's HIV rate in half .A government policy since 1997 of giving HIV patients free anti-HIV drugs has cut the national transmission rate by 53 percent, Taiwanese researchers said. [more]