UNAIDS HIV Drug Access Initiative: Providing Wider Access to HIV-related Drugs in Developing Countries, Pilot Phase

* Ultimately make essential HIV/AIDS and STD drugs more widely available
in each participating country...)
Basic Principles of the Initiative
The overriding principles that inform the Initiative were developed by UNAIDS
in consultation with affected communities. These include:
* Solutions must be tailored to the needs and situation in individual
countries;
* A rational HIV strategy in a particular country should be built on an
objective assessment and prioritization of medical and public health
interventions in the context of the country's existing infrastructure and
needs;
* While responsibility for care and treatment of people living with HIV/AIDS
rests with the government and national public health systems of the
countries in which they live, any successful effort to improve access to
HIV-related drugs requires a multipartite approach that engages all
interested parties;
* The involvement and support of local leaders, health personnel, NGOs,
governments, people living with HIV/AIDS, and the pharmaceutical
industry are essential;
* Suppliers of HIV-related drugs should be encouraged to recognize their
own market-based incentives to facilitate access to their products by
differentiating or subsidizing their prices to address the economic,
medical, and public health characteristics of individual countries
- An effective price, representing an agreed mutual value between supplier
and purchaser, will by definition vary according to the economic
circumstances in which the product is acquired and its benefit realized
- A patient in a developing country, where income is far lower than in
industrialized countries, should pay less for costly HIV-related medicines;
* The Initiative makes HIV-related drugs available for purchase through
public or private funds, with decisions about the allocation of public funds
resting with the governments of the affected countries;
* The Initiative seeks to improve funding for HIV-related drugs by:
- mobilizing political support for increasing the proportion of national
resources dedicated to healthcare in participating countries, as well as
in the international community

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