The outgoing director-general of the World Health Organisation's HIV/Aids programme yesterday called for the pharmaceutical industry to allow rival drugs companies to produce cheaper generic copies of antiretrovirals, as new figures showed the world is still losing the battle against the epidemic.
Jim Kim, who led the WHO's unfulfilled “3 by 5” campaign to get 3m people on to HIV treatment by the end of this year, called for the creation of a “humanitarian corridor” in which leading antiretroviral manufacturers allowed rivals to produce drugs at low prices for modest royalties.
