AIDS activists import cheap drugs into South Africa

An HIV/AIDS activist group, the Treatment Action Campaign, has illegally imported into South Africa quantities of the generic equivalent of Diflucan (fluconazole), the drug manufactured by Pfizer that is used to treat opportunistic AIDS infections. Organisers have been charged by police with importing an unregistered drug.

The drug is particularly expensive in South Africa's private sector, and, although substantially less expensive in the public sector, it is nevertheless out of reach of the hundreds of thousands who need it. The drug is used to treat cryptococcal meningitis and oesophageal candiditis.

Pfizer has offered the South African government supplies of …