MULTINATIONALS' AFRICAN INITIATIVES QUESTIONED

Criticism of long-term initiatives launched by multinational drug firms in Africa appears to be growing. However, local reports concede that some hopes of a real short-term improvement in the massive problems facing African healthcare are unrealistic, and that wider initiatives are not always within drug firms' core areas of competence.

The discussion follows news that the Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation is to create a US$40mn scheme to expand paediatric HIV/AIDS treatment in Africa. The plan envisages treating some 80,000 children over the next five years, with roughly 250 doctors to dispense treatment. The plan follows a flurry of announcements by other leading multinationals, such as that by France's Sanofi-Aventis outlining a new pricing scheme for the developing world.

Pressure group the Global AIDS Alliance now claims the Bristol-Myers Squibb plan will only treat 3% of the children in Africa likely to die of the disease during the next five years. However, observers in South Africa dismiss this criticism as somewhat churlish in view of the scale of Africa's wider pandemic problems.

Further, this rather more forgiving analysis suggests drugmakers should hold to their core competence -- developing and marketing innovative cures for potentially fatal diseases. With the global threat to pharmaceutical patents now seemingly on the rise again, ambitious treatment targets such as those set by the WHO are looking increasingly questionable on previous assumptions.