HIV clinics are halting enrolment of new patients as funding stalls, MSF warns

The international medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is calling for better and cheaper first line and second line treatments for HIV in the developing world, in a new report released on 20 July at the opening of the International AIDS Society meeting in Cape Town.

MSF says that a first line treatment regimen should be based on tenofovir rather than stavudine, an older, less potent drug that is more susceptible to the emergence of viral resistance and carries potential side effects of lipodystrophy and peripheral neuropathy. The World Health Organization has recommended use of tenofovir since 2006.

A generic tenofovir based regimen costs two to three times more than one based on stavudine, but that price should fall as the volume of purchases rises. Also, the more potent regimen would delay development of viral resistance, thus deferring a switch to …