Nearly 130 members of the Harvard faculty signed a statement released yesterday calling on developed countries to give $1.1 billion a year to fight AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa.

Stone Professor of International Trade Jeffrey D. Sachs `76 organized the signature drive. Outgoing Provost Harvey V. Fineberg `67 and Carswell Professor of Afro-American Studies and Philosophy K. Anthony Appiah were among the 128 signers.

In a media conference call yesterday, Sachs predicted that all companies producing effective HIV drugs would eventually provide them to poor African countries at production cost, even though 30 drug companies recently sued the South African government over its attempts to legalize generic copies of HIV drugs.

Sachs said the U.S. government, and not drug companies, is the "limiting factor" preventing the effective distribution of HIV drugs to African countries. He estimated that about 25 million people are HIV positive in southern and eastern Africa and 3 to 4 million are facing imminent death that could be prevented by these medicines.

"We can raise people from their deathbeds with these medications," said Professor of Medicine Bruce D. Walker, the other primary sponsor of the statement.

The statement comes on the heels of a series of breakthroughs in the stalemate between public health advocates calling for AIDS drug cocktails to be made available in Africa at reduced prices and the multinational pharmaceutical companies manufacturing the drugs, who wish to protect their profits and intellectual property rights.

Just last month, Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS) announced that it would not seek to stop generic companies in Africa from producing copies of an anti-retroviral drug licensed to BMS by Yale University.

The move followed efforts by the non-governmental organization Doctors Without Borders, which urged Yale to relax its patent rights.