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The Department of Health must ask manufacturers to renegotiate prices for anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs), where the prices have fallen since state tenders were last awarded, thus becoming more innovative in cutting the cost of ARVs.

The last tender for the provision of ARVs was awarded in June 2008, and since then, international prices for some of these drugs have fallen significantly. It is estimated that the state might be saving 30% on the cost of ARVs if it were using the latest prices. Yet the state is remaining bound to the high prices that were initially contained in these contracts.

Most provinces are struggling to meet the demand for ARVs, and Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi has admitted that there is a R1bn shortfall in money required for ARVs. But complacency and inertia in the National Health Department appear to be keeping prices unnecessarily high.

It should be doing one or both of two things.

Firstly, it should be asking the manufacturers concerned to renegotiate prices, given that they are now profiting from the fall in prices while South Africans are dying every day due to a lack of money to obtain these drugs. This would be a goodwill gesture on the part of the manufacturers, but one that is easily justified in the circumstances.

While manufacturers concede that prices have fallen, they say there is nothing they can do about the contracted tender price.

Secondly, the state is not bound by any volume requirements in terms of the ARV contracts it has signed. It need not buy any drugs at all from the companies who have been awarded tenders but it could go directly to cheaper international suppliers such as the Clinton Foundation.