LONDON Franco-German Aventis SA said on Thursday it would donate medicines to help fight sleeping sickness in Africa, in the latest sign firms are stepping up efforts to improve access to drugs in poor countries.

According to Reuters, Aventis has committed $25 million to support the World Health Organization's program against African trypanosomiasis -- the full name of the deadly disease. It will arrange for the production of pentamidine, melarsoprol and eflornithine, which are each essential for its treatment.

Bristol-Myers Squibb of the U.S. is to fund the cost of supplying the bulk material for production of one year's supply of eflornithine.

The deal, which also involves disease surveillance and research, is one of a series of initiatives from an industry under mounting pressure to cut the cost of supplying drugs against life-threatening diseases in poor countries.

Earlier on Thursday, Swiss-based Novartis AG said it would supply a promising new anti-malarial drug to poor countries at the cost of production.

Several companies have slashed the price of AIDS treatments in Africa in recent months, but the industry was widely attacked for trying to block a South African law which could open the way to cheaper drug supplies. The court case was dropped last month.

Sleeping sickness, a parasitic infection transmitted by the tsetse fly, is once again a mounting problem in much of sub-Saharan Africa after it had been close to being eliminated in the early 1960s.

Only one in 10 of those suffering currently receive proper treatment for the disorder which eventually affects the central nervous system, causing severe neurological disorders and, if left untreated, death.