Debbie Cohen Manchester

South African AIDS activist protests over the availability of drugs, by lying in a pile of crosses representing dead HIV victims

Generic antiretroviral drugs have been imported into South Africa from Brazil by a leading AIDS activist group to highlight the need for affordable treatment for the country's sufferers.

Members of the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) imported two shipments of the drugs for 50 patients at primary care clinics run by Medécins sans Frontières (MSF) in Khayelitsha, a shanty town outside Cape Town.

The antiretroviral drugs are those used in a triple combination treatment regimen in the United Kingdom and the United States and include versions of AZT, 3TC, and nevirapine.

MSF said that buying generic drugs, which are manufactured in Brazil, India, and Thailand, can halve the cost of treatment from $3.20 to $1.55. At the World Trade Organisation conference last year it said that developing countries won the right to ignore the patents placed on drugs, in the interest of public health.

Despite this, the South African government does not allow the use of antiretrovirals in the public health sector, arguing that they are too expensive, toxic, and difficult to administer.

But Dr Eric Goemaere of MSF South Africa said that the primary care clinics providing the drugs in Khayelitsha show that antiretroviral treatment can be used safely and effectively in South Africa.

He said: "Our project shows that antiretroviral therapy is feasible in a resource poor setting, contrary to those who insist that poor Africans are not able to successfully take these drugs. Patients who are critically ill are now returning to their normal lives."

MSF insists that without a change in policy in South Africa people will continue to die prematurely from a treatable disease and has called on the South African government to allow people to use cheaper antiretroviral drugs.