Health GAP Coalition
www.healthgap.org
www.globaltreatmentaccess.org
Sign on Letter
January 29 2001
Treatment Action Group
www.treatmentactiongroup.org
SEND ENDORSEMENTS TO: asia@critpath.org
To:
The Pharmaceutical Manufacturers' Association of South Africa
Alcon Laboratories (S.A.) (Proprietary) Limited
Bayer (Proprietary) Limited
Bristol-Myers Squibb (Proprietary) Limited
Byk Madaus (Proprietary) Limited
Eli Lilly (South Africa) (Proprietary) Limited
Glaxo Wellcome (South Africa) (Proprietary) Limited
Hoecsht Marion Roussel Limited
Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals (Proprietary) Limited
Janssen-Cilag Pharmaceutica (Proprietary) Limited
Knoll Pharmaceuticals South Africa (Proprietary) Limited
Lundbeck South Africa (Proprietary) Limited
Merck (Proprietary) Limited
Msd (Proprietary) Limited
Novartis South Africa (Proprietary) Limited
Novo Nordisk (Proprietary) Limited
Pharmacia & Upjohn (Propietary) Limited
Rhone-Poulenc Rorer South Africa (Proprietary) Limited
Roche Products (Proprietary) Limited
Schering (Proprietary) Limited
Schering-Plough (Proprietary) Limited
S.A. Scientific Pharmaceuticals (Proprietary) Limited
Smithkline Beecham Pharmaceuticals (Proprietary) Limited
Universal Pharmaceuticals (Proprietary) Limited
Warner-Lambert S.A. (Proprietary) Limited
Wyeth (Proprietary) Limited
Xixia Pharmaceuticals (Proprietary) Limited
Zeneca South Africa (Proprietary) Limited
Bayer Ag
Boehringer-Ingelheim International Gmbh
Boehringer-Ingelheim Kg
Bristol-Myers Squibb Company
Byk Gulden Lomberg Chemische Fabrik Gmbh
Dr. Karl Thomae Gmbh
Eli Lilly And Company
F. Hoffman-La Roche Ag
Merck Kgaa
Merck & Co., Inc.
Rhone-Poulenc Rorer S.A.
Smithkline Beecham
Warner-Lambert Company
Oliver Cornish
Dear [Plaintiff],
We the undersigned are HIV/AIDS treatment activists, human rights advocates, women's organizations, and other concerned organizations. You are receiving this letter because you are suing the government of South Africa in an effort to maintain high prices for patented pharmaceuticals, which will prevent millions of people from obtaining life extending treatment (Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association of South Africa versus the President of South Africa, case no. 4183/98). As you know, oral arguments on this case will begin March 5, 2001 before the High Court in Pretoria. This three-year lawsuit, a protracted effort to derail implementation of South African Medicines and Related Substances Control Act ("the Medicines Act"), is having a deadly impact on South African people and citizens of poor countries around the world. Therefore we demand you immediately remove yourself as a plaintiff from this lawsuit.
The Medicines Act is an effort by the South Africa government to reform apartheid-era legislation and to increase affordable medication access for its people through familiar provisions including parallel importing, compulsory licensing, and generic drug substitution. The grave crisis in lack of access to medication in South Africa cannot be overemphasized: in the case of HIV disease, more than 4.3 million South Africans are infected with HIV but less than 0.2 percent of infected people have access to drug treatment to stabilize disease progression and extend life. Your lawsuit has tied the hands of the South African government, making it unable to implement potentially life-saving reforms while South African citizens die preventable deaths every day.
The Medicines Act, you claim, would unfairly infringe on the intellectual property rights of drug makers and would cost substantial profits. In fact, the entire continent of Africa generates less than 1.3 percent of global profits from drug sales. Clearly your concern lies not with the lives of the tens of millions of poor people who have no access to drugs, but with protecting your unfettered access to the few in the North who are willing to pay top dollar, no questions asked.
While a slim minority of people with HIV in wealthy countries reap the life extending benefits of overpriced HIV medications, 90 percent of the world's 36 million people with HIV have absolutely no hope of anything beyond a death sentence, including virtually all of the 4.3 million people with HIV living in South Africa. But companies-including yours-claim they are doing enough to increase HIV drug access for the tens of millions of people who have no access to HIV treatment.
For example, the much-hyped UN/drug company HIV medication price reduction initiative, touted by industry as a far reaching, innovative program, has been roundly criticized as moving too slowly, subjecting individual countries to prolonged imbalanced negotiations, and having an unacceptably narrow impact. You and the other 41 plaintiffs in this case are preventing South Africa from implementing its domestic plan to end inequity in medication access. Battling the extraordinary devastation wreaked by the AIDS crisis requires many strategies and modes of attack-not only industry-controlled charity programs.
We do not claim that affordable drugs are a panacea in the fight to end the global AIDS crisis. But truly affordable medication is the foundation of any meaningful effort that will actually save lives.
The shameful three-year battle by your company and the other plaintiffs is a wholehearted effort to ensure that medication is denied to those who need it most. This lawsuit stands squarely in the path of South Africans, as well as millions from other countries who are closly watching this precendent-setting case and who are desperately seeking access to life extending, affordable medication. You have a choice: unless you take action and remove yourself from the lawsuit, you will be known forever as the company who sued to prevent the South African government from daring to increase the availability of life-extending medication for its citizens. Your lawsuit directly threatens the lives of millions. We therefore call on you to withdraw from the PMA of South Africa lawsuit without further delay.
Sincerely,
[List in Formation]
cc:
The Honorable Thabo Mbeki, President, Republic of South Africa
Dr. Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, Minister of Health, Republic of South Africa
Zackie Achmat, Chairperson, Treatment Action Campaign
The Honorable Kofi Annan, Secretary General, United Nations
James Wolfensohn, President, The World Bank
Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland, Secretary General, World Health Organization
Dr. Peter Piot, Executive Director, UNAIDS
The Honorable Colin Powell, Secretary of State, USA
Robert Zoellick, United State Trade Representative-Designate
Congressional Black Caucus