This Foreign Policy article by Tina Rosenberg explodes a lot of conventional wisdom about AIDS, and is well worth reading in its entireity. However, what really surprised me was the fact that patients in poor countries are much, much, better about keeping up with their drug regiments for AIDS than us Americans, where only about 70% take the drugs on time as opposed to well above 90% in places like Camaroon, Uganda and Malawi. Shamefully, I had always unthinkingly bought into the racist trophe that Africans somehow less likely to follow the regiment correctly. At least I didn't go as far as Andrew Natsios, who runs the U.S. agency for International Development by the way, by speculating that African simply lack the western concept of time necessary to take retroviral drugs on schedule.
So why are we so bad at taking our medicine compared to Africans? Rosenberg speculates that there is more community support in Africa, and since AIDS have been so devastating, the consequences of not taking your medicine is much more salient. But she bought up another point -- whereas an American patient needs to take a whole handful of different drugs to get the full cocktail required to stay healthy, Africans have access to generic drugs that combine all those medicines into one pill.
Why are we making it harder for our AIDS patients to get the medicine they need to stay healthy? Yes, I know that the pharmaceutical companies aren't charities and they're not going to give up their sweet, sweet, profits one day before their patent runs out, but you'd think they'd care enough about their customers to get together and make a combination pill that will be easier to take and simply split the revenue. Not only would they be making the lives of AIDS patients easier, they would also cut down on the chance of resistance in the AIDS virus developing because of incorrectly followed regiments. There is no excuse.
-- Battlepanda