Five of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies have agreed to lower the cost of anti-AIDS drugs for poor nations, beginning what activists hope is a turning point in the international fight against the disease, the Washington Post reports.

The firms -- Germany's Boehringer Ingelheim, England-based Glaxo Wellcome, Switzerland's F. Hoffmann-La Roche and American firms Bristol-Myers Squibb and Merck & Co. -- have agreed to reduce their prices to "very low" levels, according to the Post.

The agreement was hammered out with the United Nations Joint Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS). While drug prices will be reduced to as-yet-unspecified levels, the manufacturers will require nations in the program to have HIV testing procedures in place, offer counseling services, be able to efficiently deliver the drugs, and provide follow-up monitoring.

While antitrust laws might prevent these companies from setting specific target prices, Glaxo Wellcome officials stated the price of their Combivir pill could be cut from about $16.50 a dose to around $2 in these countries. Company officials would not say how close this lower price was to the cost of manufacturing the drug, the newspaper reports.

(Drug maker Pfizer Inc. last month announced its own plan to donate one anti-AIDS drug, Diflucan, to the South African government.)

Newer combinations of AIDS drugs have been shown to cut death rates by around 40 percent, but because treatment can run up to $10,000 a year, these drugs have been used primarily in wealthier countries. They haven't been widely used in the rest of the world, even though developing nations account for 95 percent of all HIV-infected people, the newspaper reports.

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