A Kenyan law allowing genetic and other inexpensive anti-retroviral HIV/AIDS drugs to be imported into Kenya and manufactured in the country came into effect recently. Drug companies blasted the country, but aid agencies said the move will lead to greatly expanded access to drugs for Kenyans with HIV.BBC Online reported only 3,000 of the 2 million Kenyans infected with HIV are now on anti-retrovirals, which it reported cost about $85 per month. “Genetic competition is the way forward,” said Kenyan doctor John Wasonga. “If we have generics at a fair price, then the majority of these people will be able to see their next birthday. Or see their children finish school.”

Sophie-Marie Scouflaire of Medecins Sans Frontieres said cheaper drugs will create a snowball effect, allowing charities to buy and administer the treatments. “If the medicines are cheaper, you will have more private companies who will give them to their staff,” she said. “It will be less expensive to treat their employees (with anti-retrovirals) than pay bills from hospitals.”

GlaxoSmithKline’s Kenya Marketing Director William Kiarie said, however, that anti-retroviral prices are already one-tenth of their original price but that usage has not increased accordingly. “Bringing the price down by 10 percent, 20 percent, we are going to see very little increase in people using the drugs,” Kiarie said. “Basically, because people are poor, and governments are poor.”

Meanwhile, some HIV/AIDS groups have complained that inferior infrastructure and stifling state bureaucracy will limit the law’s effect. One Kenyan manufacturer that has already been working for 1 1/2 years to produce triple therapy drugs will have to wait at least six months for their drugs to be licensed, BBC Online reported, adding that the country’s health service is “ramshackle” (Ishbel Matheson, BBC Online, May 1). Sobby Mulindi of the Kenya AIDS Watch Institute criticized the government for doing too little, questioning its urgency to pass the new law without making plans to train medical personnel in administering the drugs.