Drug company provides free AIDS medications

There may be no cure for AIDS, but there are medications which can improve and extend the lives of those affected. For a long time those pharmaceuticals were too expensive for most Belizeans, but now, one of the key treatments used internationally has became available here at home, and, best of all, at no cost. Jacqueline Woods has more.

Vildo Marin, Minister of Health
?This initiative will provide anti-fungal medication, Diflucan, at no costs to persons living with HIV/AIDS. This donation has no dollar limit, and more important, it will not have any time limit.?

Jacqueline Woods, Reporting
Today, Belize became the second country in the Caribbean, third in Central America and the thirty-fifth Nation in the world to offer to persons living with HIV and AIDS medication at no cost to them through a partnership programme with Pfizer Incorporated. Diflucan is not a cure for the deadly disease, but rather the medication has been recognized by the World Health Organization as the only recommended outpatient treatment for two opportunistic fungal infections associated with AIDS. The infections require a six month treatment that can cost patients up to nine thousand dollars, making it financially impossible for persons to receive the care.

Sylvia Varela, G.M., Pfizer Central America
?cryptococcal Meningitis affects ten percent of all people living with AIDS and is usually fatal over a short period of days if not treated on time. Oesophageal candidiasis is present in all forty percent of HIV/AIDS patients and produces a general state of discomfort.?

Belize health authorities will supervise the Diflucan Partnership Programme to ensure its success. The medication will be supplied via internet requests following a simple formula supervised for this purpose.

Sylvia Varela
?Already, two thousand tablets have been donated to Belize under the new Central American programme. In this country, the government will assist all citizens diagnosed with cryptococcal meningitis and oesophageal candidiasis in the hospitals and the…hospitals in Belize.?

Jacqueline Woods for News Five.

The Ministry of Health urges the public not to be complacent about H.I.V. infection in Belize, even if the rate of new infection appears to be levelling off. Authorities maintain that Belize needs a forceful multi-sector approach to changing people’s attitudes and risky behaviour.