The legal action taken by major drug companies in South Africa to halt the import of cheap generic medication in the fight against Aids serves to highlight not only the commercial ambitions of the companies but also the frightening extent of the Aids epidemic in Africa. With its vast mineral deposits South Africa has the continent's most powerful economy and a European-style legal system in which respect for property, whether physical or intellectual, has a fundamental role. The chances of success for the pharmaceutical companies would, therefore, be far greater in Pretoria than in many other African capitals.
But despite its comparative wealth and economic development, South Africa is a poor country by international standards in terms of GDP per capita. It also has an Aids problem of terrifying proportions. More that a quarter of a million South Africans died of the disease last year. Estimates of people who are HIV positive range between 10 and 20 per cent of the population and there is indisputable evidence that the vast majority cannot afford the use of medication produced by the pharmaceutical giants. The companies have based their case on the need to generate large sums of money in order to fund their expensive research and development programmes and on their claim that South Africa would break international law by allowing the use of generic versions of drugs on its territory. Whatever about their need to fund research programmes, the trial is undoubtedly a public relations disaster for the companies. To go to law in order to maintain high prices in a country devastated by the disease makes it easy to portray them as uncaring and lacking in compassion.
GlaxoSmithKline, the company recently created from the merger of Glaxo Wellcome and SmithKline Beecham, has offered to provide non-profit organisations in developing countries with its products at prices reduced to the level of generic drugs. While this undoubtedly puts the company in a better light it comes at a time when it has announced a 13 per cent increase in profits to almost $7.7 billion. Although cautiously welcoming the move Oxfam said it failed to address the central problem which was the use of patent rules to keep low-cost generic drugs out of poor countries. On the other hand the South African government has a lot to gain from the drug companies' action in that it can, somewhat tardily, be seen as fighting a battle for the country's afflicted.
President Thabo Mbeki's adherence to the bizarre theory that HIV does not lead to Aids had previously been of little consolation to the epidemic's victims. Mr Mbeki appears to have softened his views somewhat in the light not only of criticism from the international community but also from his predecessor Mr Nelson Mandela. In the meantime the dispute over the use of generic medicines has gone on for three years against the background of the deaths of millions in Africa. The current legal challenge ensures that it will continue for some time to come.