{"id":6813,"date":"2002-10-13T12:30:43","date_gmt":"2002-10-13T11:30:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/moomango.co.uk\/htb\/?p=6813"},"modified":"2014-06-04T09:47:13","modified_gmt":"2014-06-04T09:47:13","slug":"thai-charity-ditches-v-1-immunitor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/6813","title":{"rendered":"Thai charity ditches V-1 Immunitor"},"content":{"rendered":"

A leading charity in Thailand has admitted that a drug it has been distributing to patients with HIV does not work.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It had been giving the drug, called V-1 Immunitor, free of charge to thousands of patients, after its developers claimed it brought dramatic improvements in the health of HIV victims.<\/p>\n

Now the Salang Bunnag Foundation says it will no longer hand out the drug in its clinics.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe found that we were fooled by the company producing the pill. We have stopped distributing it,\u201d Dr Sek Aksaranukroh told the AP news agency. The inventors of V-1 Immunitor claimed this simple pill contained an ingredient that provokes the body\u2019s immune system to attack HIV-infected cells.<\/p>\n

V-1 Immunitor is made from the blood of HIV-positive patients along with calcium and magnesium.<\/p>\n

People came from all over Thailand and even from abroad, and queued in their hundreds outside the clinics set up by the charity.<\/p>\n

According to Jonathan Head, the BBC correspondent in Bangkok, many patients claimed to experience dramatic improvements in their health after taking it.<\/p>\n

The disease has ravaged families across Thailand.<\/p>\n

Others said they were willing to try it whatever its effects, since conventional HIV drugs are far too expensive for most Thais.<\/p>\n

Some of those same patients now admit the improvements were just temporary, says Jonathan Head, and doctors at the charity have finally accepted that V-1 is not a miracle cure.<\/p>\n

Estimates put the number of Thais having HIV at between 750,000 and 1.5 million.<\/p>\n

Most infected people in Thailand have no access to drugs that have been successfully used in the West.<\/p>\n

Promboon Panitchpakdi from the aid group Care Thailand told the BBC: \u201cMany people will do almost anything to try a drug in which they only have 10% faith, because what other choices do they have?\u201d<\/p>\n

Alex Renton from the Bangkok office of the Oxfam aid agency told BBC News Online last month that Thailand is becoming a dumping ground for other treatments that have been tested unsuccessfully elsewhere.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are seeing some international companies using Thai HIV-positive people as guinea pigs to try out drugs that in some cases have already failed their trials in Europe and the United States,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a lot of money to be made by evil people through this disease.\u201d<\/p>\n

Less expensive generic versions of the standard anti-retroviral drugs are now being manufactured in Thailand, and thousands of Thai volunteers are involved in the world\u2019s largest trial of a new HIV vaccine.<\/p>\n

Reference:<\/p>\n

BBC News – Friday, 30 August, 2002<\/p>\n

Source:<\/p>\n

http:\/\/ww2.aegis.org\/news\/bbc\/2002\/BB020823.html<\/a><\/p>\n

Link:<\/p>\n

http:\/\/ww2.aegis.org\/countries\/thailand.html<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A leading charity in Thailand has admitted that a drug it has been distributing to patients with HIV does not work. It had been giving the drug, called V-1 Immunitor, free of charge to thousands of patients, after its developers …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-other-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6813\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}