Haitian AIDS and HIV patients are gaining access to valuable disease-fighting drugs, thanks in part to a student project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
United Trauma Relief, an undergraduate student group at MIT, started the AIDS Drug Redistribution Project with the intention of sending unused AIDS fighting drugs to countries with high AIDS/HIV infection rates.
According to Sanjay Basu, an MIT junior and the primary project organizer, the group wanted to do something to help the AIDS epidemic.
“Not being doctors, we looked around to see what could be done,” Basu said. “One way was to redistribute these drugs.”
Basu said antiretroviral drugs, which compose the “drug cocktails” used to sustain a patient’s immunity, are often disposed of when a doctor changes a prescription to avoid having his patient build up a viral resistance.
United Trauma Relief began organizing the collection of these unused drugs in January, after investigating possible legal conflicts involved in exporting medication to another country.
Surprisingly, Basu said, the process went off without a legal hitch.
“There’s not even a loophole,” he said. “It’s entirely legal.”
United Trauma Relief is organizing the drug collection in cooperation with Partners in Health, an organization run through Harvard Medical School. Partners in Health works with AIDS patients in Haiti, and completes the actual distribution of the drugs to patients.
Partners in Health doctors Paul Farmer and Jim Yong Kim began the “HIV Equity Initiative” in Haiti, Basu said, to convince the World Health Organization that AIDS can be eradicated if medicine is made available to poor AIDS patients.
Finding unused medicine is not as difficult as it may seem, Basu said.
“We set up a [nationwide] network [to collect medication],” he said, including “community groups that do community casework,” making a total of almost 150 participating groups.
Basu said no pharmaceutical companies are involved with the project. The project is conducted entirely by United Trauma Relief, which Basu said consists of “a core of about 10 students.”
While saying he supports the project, AIDS Action Committee Executive Director Larry Kessler said he is hesitant about the program’s potential for success, saying the program “has holes.”
Kessler said he believes most AIDS patients finish the prescription in the drug cocktail, making few drugs available for donation.
“Two or three days [of medication] isn’t going to do anything to fight the disease,” he said.
Basu, however, said the program is solid, and United Trauma Relief hopes to expand the AIDS Drug Redistribution Project to Africa.
“We hope to work with Doctors Without Borders,” he said, “particularly in Tanzania, where AIDS has exploded.”
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