Saving lives with leftover AIDS drugs    Watch the video

NEW YORK (CNN) -- Jesus Aguais was working as an AIDS counselor for Latino patients when a woman from his native Venezuela entered his New York medical center office with a desperate plea.

She had sold her home and all her possessions to come to the United States to seek AIDS treatment for her son and daughter-in-law, but the medicines they needed cost $1,000 a month. She had nothing left to give and nowhere else to go.

Aguais reached into his desk drawer where he had been storing unused medications and handed her a three-month supply.

He had not planned to use the medicine this way; he had only collected it because some patients had died or experienced adverse reactions.

"Some people couldn't tolerate it, and treatment that cost $1,200 [was] being thrown away," Aguais said. "I just knew it was wrong, purely wrong. ... I was telling people, 'Why don't you bring it to me?'"

When he gave the woman the medicine, Aguais says, "it was like she saw God. And I knew something bigger had just begun."

That was in 1996. Soon after, Aguais founded Aid for AIDS International, an organization devoted to housing and redistributing HIV and AIDS medicine.

The group works in conjunction with many AIDS organizations across the globe, sending medication to those in need who live outside the United States. Watch Aguais discuss Aid for AIDS International »

He cannot legally redistribute the medicine to patients in this country, where prescriptions and medical distribution are highly regulated. But he is able to do so in developing nations in Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America and the Middle East.

In the 11 years since the foundation started, Aguais, now 39, has legally redistributed $40 million worth of HIV medications to more than 3,000 people in 27 countries.

Aid for AIDS is now the largest HIV drug-recycling program in the world, collecting $7 million worth of medications so far this year.

"People can send it directly to us, or in New York City we can pick it up," Aguais said. "And we send that on a monthly basis straight to the doctor or the patient."

Aid for AIDS offices in Venezuela, Panama, Chile, Peru and the Dominican Republic provide counseling, training and medical care for those afflicted, but there's still more to be done. The group estimates it's barely scraping the surface of recoverable unused drugs in the West that are eligible for redistribution.

An estimated 80 percent of people living with HIV outside the developed world have no access to health care and life-saving drugs, according to amfAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research.

"People need this medicine," Aguais said. "We need to get it to them. This is a matter of saving life. It's a responsibility. I see it as what I'm here to do."

"The simplest idea can make the biggest impact ... recycling HIV medicine. How many people out there are [looking for medicine]? And how many people with HIV in the United States have no idea that they could [save life] with something that is just a leftover for them?" E-mail to a friend

CNN Producers Danielle Berger and Lyda Ely contributed to this report.