5090.0: Wednesday, October 24, 2001: 12:30 PM-2:00 PM | ||||
Oral Session | ||||
| ||||
| While lifesaving medications have enabled many people with AIDS in the United States and other rich countries to survive, an HIV-positive diagnosis continues to be a death sentence for people throughout the developing world. That is because the high price of AIDS medicines puts them out of reach of all but a tiny few in Africa and elsewhere in the developing world, where 90 percent of all HIV-positive people (approximately 30 million total, and growing rapidly) now reside. The high price of these medicines is due not to the cost of production, but to the patent monopolies exploited by the multinational brand-name pharmaceutical companies. Generic competition can reduce the price of medicines by as much as 98 percent. Unfortunately, the brand-name drug companies and the U.S. government have used international trade rules and bilateral pressure to block developing nations from introducing generic competition, with horrific consequences, as the sick continue to be denied access to available treatments. U.S. government pressure, however, has been reduced by activist campaigns. Meanwhile, Brazil has resisted U.S. pressure, and shown how reliance on generic producers can lower the cost of AIDS drugs and enable a nationwide program of AIDS treatment and prevention. South Africa has also been a locus of controversy on AIDS drugs and pricing, with the government resisting certain pressures from the United States, but failing to authorize generic competition or taking steps to provide treatment to the more than 5 million HIV-positive people in the country. | ||||
| See individual abstracts for presenting author's disclosure statement. | ||||
| Learning Objectives: Participants will be able to: 1. Identify how the U.S. government and multinational drug companies have obstructed access to lifesaving AIDS medications in developing countries. 2. Understand how international trade rules have been used to obstruct access to medicines, and the room available under those rules to promote access. 3. Identify steps that public health advocates have taken to overcome these barriers. | ||||
| Affordable Prescription Drugs in the US Alan Sager, PhD, Deborah Socolar, MPH | ||||
| Access to AIDS Medications in South Africa and Brazil Rob Weissman | ||||
| Canada, Free Trade Agreements and Drug Costs Joel Lexchin, MD | ||||
| Sponsor: | APHA-Action Board | |||
| CE Credits: | Pharmacy, Social Work | |||