E-drug: AIDS Drugs film on BBC world
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Dear friends,
BBC World will broadcast a 24 minutes documentary called "The Cost
of Living" on the issue of access to AIDS treatment in developing
countries (focus on Thailand and South Africa). The film is part of the
BBC World series "Life". Despite earlier plans to show the film before
the AIDS conference in Durban, broadcasting will unfortunately
coincide only with the last day of the conference.
Broadcasting is on July 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 and 19 on BBC World at
the following times (GMT): Fri @ 1930; Sat @ 1330; Sun @ 0630;
Mon @ 0430 & 1330; Tues @ 0730 & 1630; Wed @ 0030 & 1030
Broadcasting times on other continents can be retrieved from
www.bbcworld.com
Below is the official announcement of the film:
THE COST OF LIVING
Twenty-nine year old Pramote lives in Bangkok and has AIDS. If he'd
been able to afford the drugs now routinely prescribed for HIV positive
people in the West, he wouldn't be paralysed and bedridden today.
But Pramote is actually one of the luckier AIDS sufferers in Thailand.
With the help of a project run by Medecins sans Frontieres, his family
is able to care for him at home, a great improvement on the treatment
available to most AIDS patients in the developing world. Ninety per
cent of the people infected with HIV today live in developing
countries, and most don't have access to the drugs that could keep
them alive because they are still under patent to major pharmaceutical
companies and so simply too expensive for their national health
services. This weeks Life investigates why Thailand and South Africa
applied to use compulsory licenses and parallel importing - practices
agreed under World Trade Organisation guidelines to make their own
generic versions of anti-retroviral drugs to halt the AIDS epidemic in
their countries, and asks why anti-retroviral drugs still aren't included
in their essential drugs lists.
Kind regards,
Tido
Tido von Schoen-Angerer, MD
Medecins sans frontieres - Thailand
MSFdrugs@asianet.co.th
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