A total of 300 HIV/AIDS patients in southwest China's
Yunnan Province will benefit from a three-year clinical study
program aimed at finding a feasible way to treat the large numbers
of HIV-positive patients in China.
The program will assess the convenience and tolerability of
treatment for patients as well as look at the practicalness of
treatment from the perspective of health care providers.
The program, launched on Thursday, is a collaboration between the
Yunnan provincial government, the New York-based Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center
and GlaxoSmithKline, one
of the world's biggest pharmaceutical companies that produce AIDS
drugs.
The program will adopt the worldwide-used drug cocktail treatment,
which is a combination of several AIDS drugs.
GlaxoSmithKline will provide the program with trizivir, a product
that contains three AIDS drugs, zidovudine, lamivudine and
abacavir, company representative said.
According David Ho, executive director of the center, trizivir has
been proven effective in AIDS treatment and used in the United
States for more than three years.
Ho, a well-known expert in AIDS treatment, said he hoped that the
program will set an example for AIDS treatment in China.
"We have worked closely along with our Chinese counterparts to
develop a treatment program that not only provides drugs, but also
invests in the local health care infrastructure," said Ho.
Cao Yunzhen, deputy director of the research center under the China
Academy of Medical Sciences, said a network for AIDS treatment will
be established in Yunnan Province.
Cao said the Yunnan provincial government will invest 24 million
yuan (US$2.9 million) to improve the AIDS laboratory in the
province's center for disease control to support the program.
The number of HIV/AIDS cases in China is estimated at 1 million at
the end of June. Yunnan Province has the largest number of HIV
cases in the country.
(China
Daily October 22, 2002)