How Africa’s researchers are solving Africa’s health problems
Tuesday, December 3, 2013
Professor Yasien Sayed, at Wits University in Johannesburg, recently celebrated a colossal advance in the study of HIV. Big pharma doesn’t differentiate between the strain of HIV caught by people living in sub-Saharan Africa and the strains caught in Europe and America. This is a major problem because the virus itself is continent-specific.
Sayed said the plight of HIV-infected patients is aggravated because pharmaceutical companies investigating ARV design are not designing subtype specific drugs – “because it is not in their financial interests … in my opinion, big pharmaceutical companies are not interested in South Africa or sub-Saharan Africa because we are not a viable economic market”.
Source: The Guardian (link opens in a new window)
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