Abstract
Recent advances in HIV drug development has opened new opportunities for preventing mother-to-child transmission and for providing treatment to those living with HIV/AIDS. As a result in Western countries antiretroviral therapy is now part of the standard of care. However, in the developing countries these drugs are beyond the reach of the majority of patients because of high costs and other logistical reasons. Therefore, ensuring access to anti-HIV drugs is now a major issue in the developing world. This paper discusses various strategies and options that can be used to enhance accessibility to these drugs. Seven steps have been proposed, including selection of drug combinations, priority groups that should receive these drugs, pooled procurement, rational prescribing and logistics, as well as steps needed to make available drugs within the TRIPS agreement framework.
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