AIDS activist group, the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), is squaring up for another challenge to drug companies, this time around high prices being charged for life prolonging anti-retroviral medication.

Activists will be joined by the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), the Chemical and Energy Paper, Print, Wood and Allied Workers Union (CEPPAWU), People living with HIV/AIDS and a group of doctors and nurses who work at the coal face of the epidemic.

A complaint will be lodged with the Competition Commission against drug manufacturers GlaxoSmithKline and Boehringe Ingelheim

The drug giants will be charged with excessive pricing in respect of several key drugs for the treatment of AIDS. These include Retrovir (zidovudine or AZT), 3TC (lamivudine), Combivir (AZT/lamivudine) and Viramune (nevirapine).

According to the World Health Organisation, the most commonly recommended triple drug therapy for HIV/AIDS is the combination of Combivir and Viramune.

In its submission to the Competition Commission, TAC claims that a month’€™s supply of this treatment regimen at retail costs R1 176 from Glaxo and Boehringer. By contrast, the best-priced generic internationally costs R276 per month.

‘€œThe stark fact is that for the cost of one treatment from the brand name companies, four

people with AIDS can be treated on generics,’€ TAC said in a statement, adding that it had additional evidence of excessive pricing for individual drugs.

TAC charged that the two drug companies are directly responsible for the premature, predictable and avoidable deaths of people living with HIV/AIDS, both children and adults.

The complainants said they would seek an order that GlaxoSmithKline and Boehringer Ingelheim stop the excessive pricing practices as well as an administrative penalty against the companies.

A spokesperson for TAC said the organisation would also seek a declaration that the excessive pricing by the drug companies was a prohibited practice. This would be so that people who could establish that they had suffered loss or damage as a result of the high drug charges could claim damages from those companies.

The Competition Commission is an independent body and one of its duties is to ensure that that companies compete fairly in the market and that where they dominate a particular market, they do not abuse their positions.