Contact: Durban, South Africa (mobile): Paul Davis +27 083 438 2894

Katie Krauss :+27 082 217 0552, Asia Russell: asia@critpath.org

Activist Blow Away Smokescreens, Expose Real Issues at International AIDS Conference

(6 July 2000 Durban, South Africa) Activists, physicians, health officials, researchers and people with HIV from around the world are descending on Durban, South Africa for the XIIIth International AIDS Conference. The biannual conference is the most important AIDS scientific and political event of the year. Worldwide, 95% of the 34 million people with HIV/AIDS have no little or no access to life-extending therapies. A growing international movement to demand essential medication has focused on the high price of AIDS medications and the deep price reductions possible through strategies such as generic procurement and local production via compulsory licensing.

This movement will be visible in a series of high-profile demonstrations during the conference. Activists and experts will remain available for comment or interview at the above cell phone numbers; releases and background documents will be posted to http://www.globaltreatmentaccess.org. Below, we provide an introduction to some of the events and issues to be confronted in the next week:

The first activist protest will be the Global March for HIV/AIDS Treatment, occurring on the opening day of the conference. The march is being organized by the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), an influential South African AIDS activist organization. The march is also co-sponsored by the Health GAP Coalition, a broad group of international activists based in the United States. ACT UP Philadelphia, ACT UP New York, and other member groups of the Health GAP Coalition exposed the impact of US policies on AIDS in Africa by disrupting Vice President Al Gore’s early presidential campaign appearances. Vice President Gore is the co-chair of the US/South Africa Bi-National Commission. These demonstrations led to a reversal of US trade policies that were sanctioning South Africa and other countries considering legal measures to manufacture affordable generic versions of expensive life-preserving medications.

For example, Chiron stated that they "cannot 100% guarantee the safety of their top executives" at the conference–they are not sending anyone. However, activists contend that the pharmaceutical industry does not want to witness the outcome of its pricing policies in a nation where it is estimated that one in eight people is HIV infected. Activists add that industry representatives in Europe and the US have discouraged the participation of clinicians through pulling out travel sponsorship and through exaggerations of personal risk.

"The real story is that Pfizer, Glaxo and other companies are afraid to be confronted by thousands of people with AIDS–in the exhibition halls as well as the streets of Durban–who are risking death without treatment," said Melvin White of ACT UP. "It’s one thing to explain your pricing policy at a shareholders’ meeting–it’s quite another to face a woman who can’t afford your drug to cure a fatal lung infection."

"Drug companies have nothing to show Africa but a string of broken pledges and unabashed greed." added Julie Davids of ACT UP. "They came to South Africa for clinical trials and left without the promised treatment continuation after their data was secured. They buy advertisements in Kenya papers misinforming the public about the legitimacy of generic alternatives. They are so consumed by greed that they work assiduously to block legal and ethical means of providing treatment access in a continent that represents less than 1.5% of the $400 billion global pharmaceutical market."

Activists predict a hailstorm of misleading drug discount or donation announcements in the course of the conference, following in the footsteps of the widely publicized assurance of five major drug manufacturers to collaborate with UNAIDS on a drug discounting scheme that has yet to materialize.

"What is the use of a discount offer if the drugs remain far beyond the means that most people with HIV or governments can afford?" asked SharonAnn Lynch of ACT UP New York. "These drug company announcements are about public relations, not medicine for treatable conditions. A coupon for reduced funeral expenses would probably do more good."

Activists urge policymakers to implement effective strategies for creating broad and sustainable drug access. ACT UP will release data at the conference that detail costs of inexpensive AIDS drugs currently available through generic production. For example, Brazil’s Health Ministry has saved more money and lives than any AIDS drug donation program, cutting health expenditures by almost $500 million–and reducing the AIDS death rate by 50%–through the use of cheap generic anti-HIV drugs.

Activists point to burdensome conditions, including time limits, reduced treatment indications and geographical restictions, imposed by Pfizer in their proposed South Africa fluconazole donation program, which has been rejected by TAC and condemned worldwide. Fluconazole, a life-saving treatment for opportunistic infections, is available as a generic 30 cent pill in Thailand, yet remains 57R ($8) per pill under Pfizer’s patent. Activists continue to call for Pfizer to reduce prices to generic levels or grant a voluntary license for generic production.

"The conditions attached by the drug companies can amount to a noose," said Brian Spina of ACT UP Philadelphia. "Most offers amount to nothing, or end quickly and quietly out of the public eye while suppressing calls for genuine remedies. Any efforts to deter a country from pursuing sustainable and appropriate responses to the medication crisis will be exposed," he stated.

UNAIDS: Activists will pressure UNAIDS to step beyond compiling statistics and collaborating on showy but ineffective drug company price reduction programs. "The global statistics paint a grim picture, but the numbers presume no access to treatment at all," said ACT UP Philadelphia member Jose DeMarco. "Rather than serving merely as bean-counters and naysayers, we urge WHO and UNAIDS to proceed rapidly with viable programs to increase medication access."

The conference will serve to amplify widespread condemnation of the UNAIDS announcement of price discounts from five wealthy AIDS drug producers.

"This hollow announcement raised the hopes of millions, but remains without structure, plans for implementation, or actual commitments to specific reductions," said Katie Krauss of ACT UP Philadelphia. "If the discounts do actually materialize, which insiders report is unlikely, heavy-handed nation-by-nation ‘negotiations’ are expected to discourage generic production or importation options yet keep drugs so costly as to remain out of the reach of millions,"

ACT UP Paris has pushed UNAIDS Secretary Peter Piot to publicly announce at the conference his agency’s intention to issue a public request for proposals for lowest-cost bulk purchasing of HIV/AIDS medication.

WHO: An open letter from over 25 African PWA organizations is demanding that WHO and UNAIDS quickly implement joint recommendations for urgent and widespread access to cotrimoxazole (Bactrim) to prevent a range of opportunistic infections killing thousands of people every week in Africa.

AIDS activists will also work with decision-makers from developing and least developed nations to pressure the World Health Organization to implement a directive passed during the recent World Health Assembly. In May, Zimbabwe, Swaziland, South Africa, and Brazil were successful in leading efforts to require the WHO to draft intellectual property legislation for countries struggling to come into compliance with WTO deadlines for patent protection.

"In spite of the directive, agreed upon by all WHO member states, the WHO is dragging its feet on implementation. WHO Director General Gro Harlem Brundtland is unwilling to implement this directive because it is opposed by their pharmaceutical donors," reported ACT UP Philadelphia’s Abdul Hakim.