Indian generic drug manufacturers Cipla, Ranbaxy Laboratories and Matrix Laboratories along with Aspen Pharmacare Holdings of South Africa have reached an agreement with former American President Bill Clinton's foundation to supply to African and the Caribbean countries HIV/AIDS medicines at highly reduced price.

Announcing the agreement, which will benefit tens of thousands of people in the poverty-ridden nations, Clinton said it would now be easier to make life-savings drugs widely available to people with AIDS in the developing world.

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The agreement covers antiretroviral drugs or ARVs, which will be delivered to people in Africa and the Caribbean where the Clinton Foundation's HIV/AIDS initiative is working with governments and organisations to set up country-wide integrated care, treatment and prevention programmes.

At least two million people are expected to receive the medicines by the 2008.

"This agreement will allow the delivery of life-saving medicines to people who desperately need them," Clinton said.

"It represents a big breakthrough in our efforts to begin treatment programmes in places where, until now, there has been virtually no medicine, and therefore no hope."

Under the agreement, the price of one of the commonly used triple drug therapy combinations will be substantially reduced to less than $140 per person per year. That translates into a cost of just 36-to-38 cents per person per day.

Overall, it would cut by one-third to half the current prices of the drugs in the developing nations.

ARVs from these companies have been assessed to meet international quality standards by the World Health Organisation and/or the Medicines Control Council of South Africa.

The Foundation said it has been working to get the agreement for the last seven months and trying to find ways to reduce costs and scale up production of so called "triple drug cocktails" which can substantially extend the lives of people suffering from AIDS and help prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV.

"The crisis of AIDS in the developing world requires an emergency response from the global community," Clinton said. "I applaud these manufacturers for doing the right thing."

Worldwide, between five and six million people currently need treatment though more than 40 million people are estimated to be infected with HIV. That number will rise substantially in just a few years.

However, only about 300,000 people in the developing world are receiving ARVs, with more than a third of them in Brazil. In sub-Saharan Africa, only about 50,000 people are on ARVs though four million need the medicine today.