The ceremony to mark the launching of the International Drug Purchase Facility (IDPF) – an initiative funded by Brazil, Chile, France, Norway and the UK – takes place today at UN headquarters in New York. The event will be attended by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva; the French president, Jacques Chirac; the Norwegian prime minister, Jens Stoltenberg; the Chilean foreign minister, Alejandro Foxley; and the British deputy-minister for international development, Gareth Thomas.

The IDPF constitutes a concrete outcome from the International Action against Hunger and Poverty launched by President Lula in 2004. Its aim is to facilitate access to medicines for the treatment of the three diseases that most seriously affect developing countries: AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis.

The IDPF will make large-scale purchases of medicines and negotiate reduced prices with their manufacturers. It will operate within the World Health Organization (WHO), and has the support of organizations such as UNICEF, UNAIDS, the Clinton Foundation, and the Global Fund against AIDS. As well as buying and distributing medicines, and performing quality-control, the IDPF will also invest in the WHO’s prequalification programmes as a means of increasing competition in the market and encouraging the arrival of new products.

The main recipients of IDPF medicines with be the less developed countries (LDCs), but medium-income countries that suffer a high incidence of the three diseases will also be able to receive assistance.

The IDPF will initially concentrate on priority areas such as the supply of second-line and pediatric medicines for the treatment of AIDS, new drugs to combat malaria, and pediatric medicines to treat tuberculosis. From 2007, however, it will also include programmes aimed at preventing the mother-child transmission of AIDS, and will purchase medicines for use against resistant strains of tuberculosis.

The IDPF-UNITAID will be funded by partly by innovative sources of finance – among them a tax on international airfares, to which 18 countries have already pledged support. Brazil’s contribution will be in proportion to the annual number of passengers departing from Brazilian airports on international flights.

June 2006 joint declaration on the IDPF made by Brazil, Chile, France and Norway (text in Portuguese followed by text in English).

Source: Embassy of Brazil in London