Have a Heart, Save My liver!
Statement / Press • 2014February 14, 2013 – Today, on the occasion of Valentine’s Day, Médecins du Monde and Treatment Action Group (TAG) are launching an action urging pharmaceutical giants Merck and Roche to drop their exorbitant prices for pegylated interferon, an effective hepatitis C (HCV) treatment. At least 180 million people (3% of the world’s population) have been…
A Drug by Any Other Name
TAGline • 2014The basics of generic medications, bioequivalence, and the push for good manufacturing practices Tim Horn Securing access to generic drugs to treat HIV, hepatitis C virus (HCV), and tuberculosis (TB) is now one of the most prominent strategies of global health care and treatment activism. In the vast majority of low-income countries, the licensing of…
An Activist’s Guide to Linezolid (Zyvox)
Publication • 2014By Erica Lessem and Lauren Volpert September 2014 I. Introduction Increasingly drug-resistant forms of tuberculosis (TB) are becoming more common worldwide, and few medicines are available to treat them.1 Newly developed TB drugs, such as bedaquiline and delamanid, offer some hope, but need to be taken along with other drugs. Linezolid, an antibiotic approved for…
1st Hepatitis C Virus World Community Advisory Board Report
Publication • 2014PILLS COST PENNIES, GREED COSTS LIVES July 14, 2014 By Odilon Couzin and Karyn Kaplan About the Hepatitis C Virus World Community Advisory Board Since the early years of the AIDS epidemic, people living with HIV/AIDS and their allies have organized their communities and met with drug companies, researchers, and government regulators to influence clinical…
Forgotten Negatives: The Limits of Treatment as Prevention
TAGline • 2014The CDC’s High-Impact Prevention strategy takes aim at the stubborn HIV incidence rate in the United States. The only problem: it doesn’t include an ambitious plan for those at risk for the virus By Jeremiah Johnson There is no shortage of depressing statistics when it comes to HIV prevention in the United States: 50,000 new…
Flatlined: U.S. Government Investments in Tuberculosis Research and Development, 2009–2012
Publication • 2014March 2014 By Mike Frick Introduction The goal of eliminating tuberculosis (TB) as a public health threat in the United States is under threat. In 1989, the U.S. government committed to ending the TB epidemic through the formation of a national TB elimination plan.1 Since then, the heart of the U.S. strategy for domestic TB…
The Cost of Flat Funding for Biomedical Research
Publication • 2013August 12, 2013 “The Costs of Flat Funding for Biomedical Research,” an issue brief prepared by the Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR) in collaboration with TAG, examines the declining purchasing value of public funding for health research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the impact this has on public health, scientific progress, US…
Low- and Middle-Income Countries Defuse Hepatitis C, the “Viral Time Bomb”
Pipeline • 2013June 2013 By Karyn Kaplan As rich countries prepare for a hepatitis C virus (HCV) treatment revolution, people in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) remain without access to information, prevention tools, diagnostics, care, and treatment. A growing movement of global activists is responding to this crisis. They are demanding access to affordable, quality drugs and…
amfAR TAG – The Costs of Flat Funding NIH Research
PDF • 2013amfAR TAG - The Costs of Flat Funding NIH Research
Letter Urging UNITAID to Prioritize HIV/HCV Coinfection
Letters • 2013TAG and 134 other organizations sent this letter to underscore the need for a swift response from UNITAID to hepatitis C virus (HCV) coinfection; delays will cost lives and impede scale-up when more effective and tolerable therapies are available.