Mozambique's health minister on Wednesday stressed the difficulty African countries faced in meeting the cost of anti-retrovirals. Francisco Songane said in parliament that the prices charged by the major western pharmaceutical companies were "immoral", PANA reported. Standard triple therapy costs US $12,000 per patient per year. "If we had to import these drugs, given the number of infected people in Mozambique, we would spend eight billion dollars a year." Even generic drugs from India or Brazil would be beyond the reach of most Mozambicans, he added, but suggested the problem could be dealt with through subsidies, or by employers contributing to the cost of drugs.