... gemeint ist, werden wir alle bald reich sein !!! Frage: Kennt noch jemand eine "California-based company " außer Calypte, die HIV-test-kits herstellt !? Leute, das wäre echt der Wahnsinn. Das könnten die big, big NEWS sein (#435) ! Ich rechne mit diesen bis spätestens Dienstag nach börsenschluss.
http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/8405841.htm
Posted on Sun, Apr. 11, 2004
Columbia businessmen to battle AIDS in Africa
Company to provide HIV testing and treatment where need is greatest
By C. GRANT JACKSON
Business Editor
Darius Sibalwa loves his native Africa, and he hates what the HIV/AIDS epidemic is doing to it.
With the help of his entrepreneurial skills, business associates who share his concern and a few well-placed African connections, his new company hopes to make a difference in the fight against the disease.
Sibalwa founded Southern Medical Systems in March 2003 to provide health care goods and services to countries where access to treatment and testing is limited.
The company?s first line of business will be marketing to AIDS-ravaged nations in Africa a saliva-based HIV/AIDS test kit and an oral supplement to fight the effects of the disease.
The company will begin marketing and distributing the products in Sibalwa?s native Zambia. Of the 40 million people living with HIV/AIDS in developing countries around the world, nearly four-fifths live in Sub-Saharan Africa or South Africa.
About 1.2 million people in Zambia are infected. Many more probably have the disease but have not been tested. The vast majority cannot afford or obtain medication.
?We are focusing extensively in our marketing plan with technologies that can help combat the AIDS epidemic, particularly in diagnosis and treatment of AIDS on the African continent,? said Otha Dillihay, whom Sibalwa enlisted as chief executive officer.
Dillihay, a director on the board of the Palmetto Health Alliance, has more than 20 years of experience in hospital administration and health care financing.
James Guignard, an attorney with the Columbia firm of Rogers Townsend & Thomas, is senior vice president for operations.
Sibalwa 39, who also founded SITI Group, an import/export management company in Columbia, serves as president of Southern Medical.
The company?s advisory board includes the former first president of Zambia and the current Zimbabwean ambassador the United States.
The startup is in the final stages of raising $750,000 initial capital, Sibalwa said.
The company is also negotiating contracts for the first products it intends to handle. Because those contracts are not final, Sibalwa will not name the companies that Southern Medical Systems is negotiating with.
But the company hopes to begin shipping both the test kit and oral supplement to Africa by late spring or early summer, Dillihay said.
TEST KIT
The HIV saliva-based test kit is similar to the OraSure test kit that recently received Food and Drug Administration approval for use in the United States.
The saliva-based tests are considered safer than tests that require blood to be drawn. Much like a home pregnancy test, results are ready in about 20 minutes, versus days for a laboratory to return blood tests.
Southern Medical has been negotiating with a California-based company for rights to distribute its kit. The kit does not have FDA approval but has been successful in clinical trials, Dillihay said. More than 600,000 units have been delivered to the Mexican government.
The oral supplement will come from a South Carolina-based company, Sibalwa said.
Although also not yet FDA-approved, the supplement has shown good results in tests in one African nation, Dillihay said.
The supplement is not touted as a cure, but it enhances the body?s immune system to allow it to better combat the virus.
?This is something that signals the body?s immune system to help naturally fight the disease,? Dillihay said.
The lack of FDA approval for the products is not a major concern.
?I think the FDA and the World Health Organization and the ministries of health in the African countries that have been combating this disease for some 20 years realize that if they are going to be effective, they are going to have to fast-track a lot of ideas,? Dillihay said.
?People are dying at an inordinate rate.?
BIG PLANS
In its initial phase, Southern Medical will act as a virtual marketing and distribution company.
The company plans to build a facility in South Carolina into a life sciences company with its own laboratory and production facility.
Part of the talks with the California company include possibly bringing production to South Carolina, Sibalwa said.
A great deal of money is available to battle AIDS ? about $4.7 billion worldwide last year, according to UNAIDED, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS.
Southern Medical?s business model calls for its products to be marketed to governments, charitable organizations and private health care providers.
To reach those markets, the company is relying on Sibalwa?s African connections.
?He is the only person in Columbia whom I know who can just pick up the phone and get an ambassador on the line,? Dillihay said.
Sibalwa has already enlisted the support of Kenneth Kaunda, the first president of Zambia, and Simbi Mubako, the Zimbabwean ambassador to the United States.
Mubako, whom Sibalwa recruited while the ambassador was visiting Benedict College last month, has invited the company to make a presentation in Washington this month to a gathering of African ambassadors.
That will put Southern Medical?s products in front of more than 50 countries, Sibalwa said.
The ambassador ?has been very helpful in getting us to the key people in Washington,? Sibalwa said.
Southern Medical plans to enter Africa through Zambia and then expand to Zimbabwe and Uganda the first year. The market will expand to nine more countries in the second year and to 21 by the third year, Dillihay said.
Distribution hubs will be in Zambia, Uganda and the Ivory Coast, Sibalwa said.
Also on the company?s advisory board is Waza Kaunda, a son of the former president and head of the Kenneth Kaunda Children of Africa HIV-AIDS Foundation.
Kaunda?s name and his foundation lend an air of legitimacy to the effort. He was the first African leader to be tested for AIDS, Sibalwa said. He lost a son to AIDS and has made fighting the disease a personal quest.
Kaunda made an eloquent plea for help in that fight during a 2003 visit to Columbia.
?I?ve always been mesmerized by Kaunda,? said Sibalwa, who arranged Kaunda?s trip to Columbia while the former president was a scholar-in-residence at Boston University.
He became convinced of the need to do something to help his home continent when Kaunda told him, ?We need young men like you.?
TWO DECADES HERE
Sibalwa, who has lived in the United States for the past 20 years, has known Kaunda his whole life. He fondly recalls a face-to-face meeting when Kaunda and Queen Elizabeth visited the Lusaka Boys Preparatory School, when Sibalwa was in the seventh grade.
Through Kaunda?s foundations and other similar organizations, Southern Medical hopes to make its products available for between $3 to $10 per test or treatment, Sibalwa said, as opposed to $30, $50, or even $100.
The organizations will buy the kits and oral supplement using money from agencies. The company also will offer its products to for-profit organizations.
But the plan calls for all of products ?to be directed into these countries though the health ministries, through established clinics, through reputable physicians and other clinicians,? Dillihay said.
?We want this thing to work. We don?t want to have product coming in the front door and going out the back door into the black market.?
The low cost should encourage more people to be tested. In addition, the short turn around also means people will wait on the results, rather than leaving and perhaps never returning, Dillihay said.
Dillihay also wants to provide education to the people who use their products.
?What do you do with that 20 minutes to an hour that you are waiting on confirmation of results? Get to the individual and talk to them about how this disease is not only going to effect their livelihood and longevity, but that of their children, their spouses and the people they live and work around.?
Dillihay is just as passionate about the project as Sibalwa.
He told his children, ?I can?t think of anything, including nuclear war, that in my time runs the risk of totally annihilating the human population.?
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