The United States Food and Drug Administration has given earlyapproval to a lower-cost AIDS treatment for developing nations. Themanufacturer is Aspen Pharmacare of South Africa. This is the firsttime the Food and Drug Administration has approved foreign-madecopies of drugs to treat H.I.V. infections.

Different drugs are generally used together to suppress H.I.V.,the virus the causes AIDS. The newly approved treatment involves twopills taken two times a day. It is a generic copy of one of the mostwidely used combinations of antiretroviral drugs. These drugsgenerally cost about six hundred dollars a year. But Aspen isexpected to sell its copies for perhaps half the price.

Final approval by the F.D.A. is still needed. But the agency saysits action means that the drugs meets the same quality and safetyrequirements as medicines for the United States. And that meansPresident Bush's emergency AIDS plan could pay for them.

Congress approved the five-year, fifteen thousand million dollarplan in two thousand three. But officials decided not to pay fordrugs unless the F.D.A. had approved them. AIDS activists accusedthe United States of protecting drug makers from competition fromlower-cost versions of their drugs.

Such criticism led the F.D.A. last year to establish a fasterapproval process. Agency officials say they completed their workwithin two weeks after Aspen requested approval.

The Bush administration says it hopes to provide AIDS treatmentfor two million people by two thousand eight. Most will be in Africaand the Caribbean.

The number of people receiving antiretroviral treatment indeveloping countries has increased sharply. The World HealthOrganization reports that seven hundred thousand people werereceiving treatment by the end of last year. That was up aboutseventy-five percent from a year earlier. And it met a target fortwo thousand four.

W.H.O. Director General Lee Jong-wook praised the increase whenhe appeared last month at the World Economic Forum in Davos,Switzerland. However, he warned that governments and theinternational community need to do more.

The W.H.O. wants three million people living with AIDS to bereceiving antiretroviral medicines by the end of two thousand five.This is known as the "three-by-five" campaign.

This VOA Special English Development Report was written by JillMoss. I'm Gwen Outen.