The Grass-Roots Battle.(lowering cost of AIDS drugs in Africa)(Brief Article)

At first she struggled to raise the nearly $1,000 a month she needed for an AIDS treatment regime to keep her alive. Once she nearly died from the medicine's side effects, and briefly she had to stop taking any drugs because she couldn't afford a more costly alternative. Last week the 29-year-old office worker from Cape Town learned of Merck & Co.'s radical cut in the price of its AIDS drugs, effective immediately. That meant her doctor can now prescribe Stocrin, the drug he feels will best control her illness, and still stay within strict price limits set by her health-care plan. "It's a big relief," she said after meeting with Cape Town AIDS specialist Steve Andrews. "There's hope for this thing," said Andrews, who consults patients throughout the continent. "Africans don't have to die."

Only a tiny minority of HIV-infected Africans can afford private AIDS treatment, and even fewer get it for free. But those numbers are jumping as the prices for trademarked retroviral drugs collapse. African governments are quick to point out that even if the drugs were free they would need to spend heavily to create the health-care infrastructure to treat the infected masses. But the new economic reality of AIDS treatment in Africa already is brightening what had been an unremittingly bleak picture.

Nonprofit groups are taking the lead. "We are having a very good experience with the new treatment," says Sister Little Treasa, who administers anti-retrovirals to 13 HIV-infected orphans in Nairobi. For a year the Belgian wing of Medecins Sans Frontieres has run the only public clinics in South Africa dedicated to treating AIDS patients. Another pilot project is running in Cameroon. Next month these clinics will ...