The anti-HIV treatment Kaletra has been cleared for full access by Pharmac, the government's pharamaceutical agency. The move has been welcomed by the AIDS Foundation, who have campaigned for better access to Kaletra for several years. "It's a process that has taken three years from after Kaletra was first registered in this country," says the Foundation's Positive Health Manager, Eamonn Smythe. "In that time some people have died and others have needlessly spent time in hospital needing extensive, and expensive, care. The delays caused a huge cost on our health care and a huge burden to positive people and their families that we would not want to see repeated." The Foundation says that Pharmac's process for approving new drugs must be speeded up. "If these drugs were available earlier, their recipients could have continued to be working, paying taxes, caring for their families and contributing to their communities," says Smythe.