Open Letter to Pharma Execs
TAGline • 2001“We have never been against patents. We have been against monopoly.” —Β Dr. Yusuf Hamied, CEO, Cipla Dear Sirs: We are writing as a coalition of AIDS treatment advocates, educators, and service providers to request that GlaxoSmithKline immediately withdraw from participation in threatened legal action regarding the importation of generic antiretroviral medications in Ghana and South…
Report and Recommendations from the STI Workshop, October 2000
Publication • 2001January 31, 2001 STRUCTURED TREATMENT INTERRUPTIONS WORKSHOP Workshop Summary The investigation of Structured Treatment Interruption (STI) has fluid borders. Interruption is considered a treatment strategy per se, an adjunct to treatment, as well as the removal of treatment. Though first proposed as an immune-based treatment strategy, STI is now being explored as a research tool…
Patent Politics: Nongovernmental Organization Access Effort Dealt Stealth Blow By Ivy League Development Institute
TAGline • 2001Nongovernmental Organization Access Effort Dealt Stealth Blow By Ivy League Development Institute “We observe no apparent correlation between access to antiretroviral treatment, which is uniformly poor across Africa, and patent status, which varies extensively by country and drug.” —Β Amir Attaran, Center for International Development, Harvard University, and Lee Gillespie-White, International Intellectual Property Institute Source: JAMA…
Vaccine Vitriol: Call for Poor Country Focus on Treatment, Care Programs Elicits Voice of Concern from Vaccine Outfit
TAGline • 2001Call for Poor Country Focus on Treatment, Care Programs Elicits Voice of Concern from Vaccine Outfit By Mark Harrington Price of Global Public Health HIV $4.06 billion TB $500 million Malaria $1.0 billion Add’l. infrastructure $440 million TOTAL, Yrs 1 – 3 $6.0 billion Add’l. rx and care $4.0 billion TOTAL, Yrs 5 –…
Brazil: What Went Right?
TAGline • 2000The Global Challenge of Access to Treatment and the Issue of Compulsory Licensing By Mark Harrington December 2000 “We have upside down access to AIDS drugs in this world. The drugs are where the disease is not, and the disease is where the drugs are not. Commercial interests come above human suffering.” Peter Mugyenyi Joint…
Taking it to the Street: Thousands Strong, Fledgling South African Activist Group Sends Tremors Around the Globe
TAGline • 2000Thousands Strong, Fledgling South African Activist Group Sends Tremors Around the Globe September 2000 “Defiance Campaign” in the Offing Sunday afternoon as the Durban conference was just gearing up, some five thousand demonstrators singing, chanting and dancing marched from Durban City Hall to the stadium, calling on world pharmaceutical makers to cede the Third World…
Glaxo Guts Ghana’s Import of Generic Combivir and Prepares for Battle
TAGline • 2000December 2000 The arguments over affordable life-saving medicines for the developing world intensified late last month when it was revealed that Glaxo-Wellcome has blocked the importation of inexpensive generic knock-offs of its premier AIDS drug, Combivir, into Ghana (a small country in West Africa). The conflict is the latest skirmish in one of the most…
Being There: Durban Delegates Return Stateside, Fired Up and Ready to Jump Back Into the Fray
TAGline • 2000Durban Delegates Return Stateside, Fired Up and Ready to Jump Back Into the Fray September 2000 A Mouse Roars “The answer does not lie with donations or price cuts from drug companies but rather with the mass production of quality generics. This could result in the cost of a year’s antiretroviral treatment being cut to…
While You Were Sleeping: An African AIDS Aid Chronology
TAGline • 2000An African AIDS Aid Chronology September 2000 May 12, 1999 Bristol-Myers announces five-year donation of $100 million to fight AIDS in Botswana, Namibia, Lesotho, Swaziland, and South Africa. April 4, 2000 Pfizer offers free fluconazole to South Africans with AIDS suffering from cryptococcal meningitis. May 11 Five pharmaceutical companies (Boehringer Ingelheim, Bristol-Myers, Merck, Glaxo and…
Therapeutic Drug Monitoring in HIV Clinical Care
TAGline • 2000Ready for Prime Time?, 2000 Do We Need Another Lab Test in the Clinic? July 2000 No one could accuse the HIV pharmacologists of being attention hogs — but they were excited. It was the First International Workshop on Pharmacology in HIV Therapy, held on 30-31 March 2000 in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, a storm-swept town…