Little money is being channeled towards developing treatment for diseases peculiar to developing countries, leading researchers say.

And there is no more poignant illustration of this than the development of anti-retrovirals used in treatment of HIV/Aids, says Tido von Schn-Angerer of the international aid organisation Doctors Without Borders.

Anti-retrovirals can slow down the progress of Aids, even if they cannot cure it. They normally consist of a combination of several active agents produced by different companies.

Combining different medicines in one pill and producing this as a generic drug has simplified treatment and cut costs, but this treatment is still not available to all who need it.

''We are slowly seeing a progress in the access to treatment,'' UNAids head Peter Piot told a recent meeting in Berlin.

But lack of availability of treatment universally means Aids is still "a death sentence in the developing world''.

The drug Tenofovir produced by the US-based company Gilead is an example of such difficulties, says Schn-Angerer.

The drug is being offered through an ''expanded access programme'' at costs that represent no profit to Gilead in 95 countries, a company spokesperson told IPS .

The programme was organised by the US branch of Gilead ''following the specific regulations of each individual country'', the spokesperson said.

But Schn-Angerer says that while the medication was offered at low cost, it was not possible to get it in most countries because the company had to register the drug in each country - 'and that is what they did not do".

Profit motive

According to the latest UN report on HIV/AIDS, only one in 10 people who need anti-retroviral treatment receive it.

As the HIV virus changes, it becomes resistant to given medication in two to three years. A patient must then change to a second line of treatment. In the developed countries anti-retroviral medication is available in several lines.

It is necessary to combine active agents in the second line in one pill, ''but we do not see any efforts from the industry'', said Schn-Angerer.

A second-line treatment costs about US$2,000 a year per patient. With second-line treatment people being treated for HIV could live five or six years longer.

Schn-Angerer said that, at the moment, only the first line therapy is "really affordable'", noting that the developing world is not a market of interest to the pharmaceutical industry.

''The companies do not get the same profits they are used to,'' he said, adding that compared to other industries pharmaceutical companies have very high profits.

Christian Wagner from the non-governmental organisation BUKOpharma said 90 percent of all research and development activities are focused on drugs for the western markets such as anti-allergics, cancer therapies and drugs lowering cholesterol levels.

''In the last 25 years around 1,400 new active agents were developed, but only 13 were to treat tropical diseases from which a majority of the world's population suffers.''

The US represents about 41 percent of the global pharmaceuticals market, Wagner said. Europe represents 25 percent and Japan 11 percent. Africa and Asia together account for 16 percent of medicine sales, and Latin America just 7 percent.

When the anti-impotency pill Viagra entered the market, other companies developed similar products within three years, Wagner said.

''If there was the same vigour in research on tropical diseases, we would be advancing in huge steps.''

Developing a new medicine can cost up to US$500 million, several companies claim. That enables companies to sell them at high prices.

But Wagner says other studies show that development costs are far less. He also pointed out that a lot of the research funds come from taxpayers' money because basic research is conducted by public institutions such as universities. Many costly clinical studies are often financed by government institutes.

''We think that if the research is publicly funded, the results should be publicly available, too,'' added Wagner. - IPS