Korea praised for fighting against HIV

Denis Broun, executive director of UNITAID

By Nam Hyun-woo

Korean Air travelers have been helping HIV patients in poor countries without knowing it, said the head of an international organization.

Denis Broun, the Executive Director of UNITAID, the drug purchasing unit of the World Health Organization (WHO), said during an interview that the 1,000 won tax on air tickets that travelers pay goes into a huge fund used to support the medical needs of children in developing countries afflicted with HIV, malaria and tuberculosis (TB).

“It’s called etiquette tax,” said Broun.

He explained that the etiquette tax is used to finance 70 percent of his organization activities globally. There are currently 10 countries participating in the etiquette tax program. The organization uses these contributions to negotiate with pharmaceutical firms to supply HIV drugs to developing countries at lower price.

Korea is the only Asian country taking part in the program. It has donated a total of $28 million to the organization between 2006 and 2011.

“UNITAID put this money into changing how the drug markets of the three diseases work. It changes markets to work for the advantage of the poor, by reducing the cost,” he said.

UNITAID prides itself on how transparently it spends the funds it receives from the private sector. It also cooperates with the private sector in very effective ways towards achieving its goals.

He said “We give money to organizations such as Doctors without Borders, UNICEF and the Clinton Foundation. Working with those organizations always guarantees you a 100 percent of certainty. And that is why we don't work with countries directly. There are difficulties.”

Negotiation with pharmaceutical firms is the main strategy of the organization to achieve its goal of cutting the cost of medicines. But even with this, we have to ensure that the companies do not sacrifice their profits in the process.

“If they cannot make profit, they may be going to give us a gift (isolated drugs procurements) once. It will not change the market for the poor and it will just end up creating opportunity,” he said.

Instead of making respective orders for respective countries, UNITAID regroups the demand in a much planned way to make it simple and massive, which reduces drug prices.

Its approach is to offer incentives that will increase the number of pharmaceutical companies in each market so as to engender competition in a bid to drive down prices.

“All of these are the intervention of the poor countries’ drug markets to supply medicines for HIV, malaria and TB, which we think are the most urgent diseases that African people suffer from,” he said.

The organization has so far successfully achieved an 80 percent reduction on the price of antiretroviral drugs and malaria treatment drugs for children in Africa and also a 40 percent cut on new rapid tests for TB.

He said, “the 1,000 won that the Korean passengers pay is actually making a lot of difference and having a huge impact, because of the way we work and the results we have obtained.”

Broun expressed a genuine determination to provide medical aid to North Korea but admitted that it has been very challenging to deal with the government in Pyongyang.

“But we have been working and interacting with North Korean representatives at the WHO,” he added.

To increase its funding revenue, the organization is seeking a new method of fund raising, called “innovative financing.”

“We are trying to impose a small amount of tax on financial transactions in 11 EU countries. People there earn billions of dollars with some Internet and financial transactions, while paying too little in tax. With their contributions, many HIV, malaria and TB patients can go resume normal life,” he said.

He said the priority is to free as many people as possible from diseases.

“The success of the organization was not that we have treated 360,000 children. The success is now we no longer need to treat them and they went back to their normal lives, because of efforts from governments, pharmaceutical firms and doctors."

"Our work is catalytic. We are not a big funding organization. We just change the situation of the market.” He added.