ABIDJAN, March 23 (AFP) - World Health Organisation (WHO) director for Africa Ebrahim Mailick Samba Friday said he personally favoured cheap generic drugs to fight the HIV-AIDS pandemic.
Ending a five-day fact-finding mission to the Ivory Coast, Samba said he backed the easy access to cheap medicines as "I am primarily a doctor and I do not want to see poor people dying because they cannot buy medicines.
"The problem is that many of the drugs available for HIV-AIDS are manufactured patents and the pharmaceutical companies are reluctant to give up the patents because they want to recover the cost of research and development."
Samba, however, expressed hope that an ongoing legal battle in South Africa between pharmaceutical companies and the government over the issue would "be resolved through a compromise."
The WHO on March 7 said it backed efforts to get cheaper medicines to those in need but was neutral in South Africa's legal battle to import and produce cheap generic anti-AIDS drugs.
Samba also said he had doubled WHO's budget for the Ivory Coast, one of the worst AIDS-affected countries in west Africa, to four million dollars this year.
According to official figures, 10 percent of the sexually active population in Ivory Coast is infected with the disease.
Kenya and the Ivory Coast have started moves to make available cheap generic drugs to fight AIDS.
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