Drugs Given Away by AIDS Patients in U.S. Prolong Lives Worldwide

[CShine]

MEXICO CITY (AP) - Jose Clemente, who restores artworks in Mexico's capital, has never met Daphne Rivera, a Brooklyn health educator. But medicines donated by Rivera are keeping Clemente alive. From Mexico to Mauritania, India to Iran, patients in poor countries have to piece together drug cocktails helping to prolong their lives using HIV and AIDS pills donated in the United States. Americans give away their pills after they switch medications or while taking physician-encouraged drug holidays. Others are donated by friends and family members of U.S. patients who die.

U.S. authorities won't take back unused drugs once they have been prescribed because of fears about tampering. Giving away leftover pills to individual Americans is against U.S. law, but medicine can be donated to designated nonprofit groups for shipping out of the country as humanitarian aid.

Clemente found out he had HIV in 1994, and has received donated U.S. pills for four years. Every two months, medications sent from New York through Dallas arrive in the 36-year-old's apartment on Mexico City's western outskirts.

"I have many things I still want to do with my life," he said. "My medication is giving me the time I need to do them."

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