Chinese firm distributes anti-AIDS 'cocktail'

SHANGHAI, China -- A Chinese company on Tuesday began distributing generic drugs that mix into a potent anti-AIDS "cocktail," the first time a low-cost version of the treatment has been available in China.

Trucks carrying hundreds of thousands of doses of the two drugs, dd1 and d4t, arrived in the central province of Henan, where the Chinese-made mixture first will be available, said a spokesman for drug maker Desano Shanghai.

The spokesman, Zhang Junjie, said the drugs were paid for by central health authorities in Beijing. He refused to elaborate, but Henan has been hit by an AIDS epidemic triggered by illegal blood buyers.

The so-called cocktail treatments, which involve groups of drugs given in succession, have helped AIDS patients in the West.

Desano's generic version costs $435-$560 per year, Zhang said. Imported name-brand drugs cost about 20 times more.

Desano received permission from Beijing in September to produce the generic versions.

The patent in China for dd1 is held by Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. The New York-based pharmaceutical giant has said Desano's powder version of dd1 does not violate its patent, which applies to the drug's tablet form.

Beijing approved the generic treatment in what critics have called a belated response to China's exploding AIDS problem. After years of underestimating the disease's toll, the government said last year that more than 1 million people in China are infected and 10 million could be by the end of the decade.

Reports that rural areas in Henan were decimated by AIDS helped pressure the government into action. The disease was spread there by illegal blood buyers, called "bloodheads," who reused dirty needles while collecting blood from poor farmers.

Desano will produce enough drugs to supply 500,000 people with the cocktail every year, Zhang said.

A manufacturer in northern China has begun producing a low-cost, generic version of a single AIDS drug, AZT, for which patents recently expired.

The Health Ministry has said 10 more Chinese companies have applied for permission to make generic versions of anti-AIDS drugs with expired patents, and might begin producing them by the end of this year.