Source: Bloomberg

Author: John Lauerman

(Bloomberg) -- Pfizer Inc., the world's biggest drugmaker, said it will give $1 million to spearhead an effort
by 12 companies to boost AIDS education, testing and prevention in three U.S. cities.

Companies including Pfizer, Levi Strauss & Co., Chevron Corp., Coca-Cola Co. and OraSure Technologies Inc. said they will donate expertise in marketing and testing to help bring down the rate of new infections with the AIDS virus, according to the Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, based in New York. The effort will be concentrated in Washington, New York, and Oakland, California, the coalition said in a statement.

U.S. health officials said last year that about 56,300 Americans are infected annually with the AIDS virus, HIV, which is about 40 percent more than the agency previously estimated. Stronger efforts to find out who has the virus, which is transmitted via sex and body fluids such as blood, may help bring down rates that are surging in minority populations including black men, said Oakland mayor Ronald Dellums, who has led a testing effort in his city.

"These companies have tremendous expertise in marketing, in research, and in targeting populations with messages," Dellums said yesterday in a telephone interview. "We're hoping they can bring their programs to help us become more effective
and reverse the trajectory of the pandemic."

1.1 Million Infected

About 1.1 million people in the U.S. are infected with HIV, and one out of five don't know it, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. People who are unaware they're infected with HIV are more likely to spread the disease than those who have been diagnosed and take precautions, according to the CDC. The agency will also be involved in the collaboration.

The CDC in 2006 recommended routine testing for everyone aged 13 to 64 years. The coalition, which also includes Home Box Office, the National Basketball Association and the Women's National Basketball Association, will try to help cities reach testing goals, said John Newsome, senior director of the coalition's U.S. HIV initiative.

"We're working with our members to match them up with health agencies and programs that need expertise and resources," Newsome said in a telephone interview. "A company like HBO or Coca-Cola can bring tremendous resources to the development of prevention and testing educational materials."

Pfizer Expertise

In addition to its financial contribution, Pfizer, maker of the Selzentry AIDS drug, also will donate expertise in project management and education to promote HIV testing that will help get infected people into treatment programs. Pfizer has helped link HIV testing results with hospital patient records in Kenya, to make sure that infected people are tracked, monitored, and receiving appropriate treatment, said Jack Watters, the company's chief medical officer.

"We like to see our contribution as funding plus expertise," he said yesterday in a telephone interview. "In the broader context, it's an opportunity to address health inequities."

About half of the people who catch HIV in the U.S. each year are black, making them the most vulnerable to the disease of the country's minority groups. About 401 people tested positive for HIV in Oakland last year. Half of those patients -- most of them black -- were tested late in the disease, when they'd already begun developing AIDS symptoms, said Marsha Martin, director of Get Screened Oakland, the city's HIV testing
push.

"We still have to get our hands around this problem," Dellums said. "We still have to wrestle it to the ground and the hope is that this collaboration will help us do that."

Originally published June 23, 2009