A timely cure for greed

Thailand has stepped in where the West greedily refused to go by developing its own cheap treatment for HIV/Aids. It is a lesson other nations should take note of and use to battle infectious diseases.

Diseases have long been the bane of the developing world. Pharmaceutical companies, mostly based in the United States and Europe, have refused to lower the cost, or even to develop, drugs to fight killers like malaria, African sleeping sickness and HIV/Aids - which are most prevalent in Asia and Africa.

Malaria alone claims three million lives globally each year and infects hundreds of millions more, yet these figures have done nothing to soften the attitude of financially greedy drug-makers. Despite pressure from governments, they have refused to offer their life-saving treatments for a lower and more affordable price than in the West.

In another gesture to harden the blow to the impoverished, these companies have also jealously guarded patents, refusing to allow the production of cheap, generic copies.

Because the world's most serious diseases are in developing countries, firms have been loathe to pump research funds into developing more effective and possibly cheaper treatments.

Charitable organisations such as Medecins Sans Frontieres have been forced to carry out their work by buying drugs and then distributing them free. But the financial and human resources of such groups are limited and they reach only a limited number of affected people.