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I’m Steve Ember with the VOA Special English Development Report.
The fight against AIDS got some more help earlier this month. The Swiss
drug manufacturer Roche and the Clinton Foundation announced separate
efforts to provide H.I.V. drugs to poor nations.
Roche says it will provide drug companies in developing nations with
technical assistance to make copies of a drug called saquinavir.
Saquinavir is taken in combination with other medicines. It is used to
treat H.I.V. patients with or without AIDS.
H.I.V. is the virus that develops into AIDS. Victims lose their ability
to fight infections. For example, many people with AIDS die of
tuberculosis.
Roche says it plans to start its technology transfer program in more
than sixty nations, mostly in Africa and Asia. Officials say the countries
represent about seventy percent of all people living with H.I.V. and AIDS.
Medical experts say more than forty million people are infected around the
world.
Roche says it will have a special team to deal with requests later this
year. The company's chief, William Burns, says the drug maker wants to
share its knowledge to help strengthen local drug manufacturers. Some of
the team will be based in Africa.
The action announced by the Clinton Foundation involves two other
H.I.V. medicines: efavirenz and abacavir. The foundation has negotiated
agreements with drug makers to cut the cost of these two antiretroviral
drugs by more than thirty percent. This will involve five companies in
India and South Africa.
The Clinton Foundation says it has also secured agreements involving
tests for H.I.V. Four companies have agreed to provide developing nations
with testing supplies at half of what they cost now. The companies are in
China, India, Israel and the United States.
Bill Clinton calls the agreements an important step in the fight
against H.I.V. and AIDS. The former president says that together they will
help fifty developing nations.
H.I.V. can be spread by sexual relations, or infected blood or blood
products. The virus can pass between pregnant women and their babies, and
between drug users who share injection needles.
Last year the world had an estimated three million AIDS-related deaths
and five million new infections. Medicine can suppress H.I.V., but not
prevent it or cure it.
This VOA Special English Development Report was written by Jill Moss.
Read and listen to our reports at voaspecialenglish.com. I’m Steve
Ember. | 
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