E-drug: FT on Global Fund
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Greetings from Genoa - where things are very hot as I am sure you
have learnt by now from the media. We are here to ask attention
for the need for action to increase and ensure access to medicines.
Yesterday the G8 and the S-G Kofi Annan announced the Global
fund but still financial contributions and policies that will govern the
fund lag behind.
Ellen 't Hoen (MSF) [Distributed as fair use. HH]
G8 health fund pledges 'inadequate'
Financial Times; Jul 21, 2001
By Alan Beattie and Stephen Fidler
The world's richest countries yesterday formally launched a new
fund to fight Aids, but divisions remained over how it should be
administered and health charities said the amount pledged was
inadequate.
Kofi Annan, secretary-general of the United Nations, said the
Dollars 1.2bn (Pounds 840m) pledged to the fund was a "good
beginning". But he added: "Much more needs to be done in the
fight against illness in the world. We need resources of more than
Dollars 7bn-Dollars 10bn a year." Governments and corporations
needed to do "as much as possible".
The leaders of the Group of Seven and Russia agreed to make the
fund operational at the start of next year. The fund is intended to
buy drugs and support health systems in poor countries to combat
HIV-Aids, tuberculosis and malaria. Experts from UNAIDS, the
United Nations agency, have calculated that an effective global
campaign against HIV would cost Dollars 7bn-Dollars 10bn.
With health charities saying that Dollars 1.2bn does not even begin
to address the scale of the problem, the UN sought to play down
the discrepancy between the figures, saying that only a part of the
total spending needs to be delivered through a stand-alone fund.
The rest will come from other sources of bilateral and multilateral
aid and - in middle income countries - from their own governments.
After yesterday's announcement the composition of the committee
that will manage the fund was still not clear.
The committee is likely to contain representatives of rich and poor
country governments and experts from agencies including the UN.
But the balance of power on the committee, along with the
possibility of inviting on representatives from private foundations,
remained undecided.
One significant difference of views is between the US and
Europeans over the question of how the fund buys drugs.
Europeans favour a system - perhaps an auction managed by a UN
agency - in which drugs are sold in poor countries for a significantly
lower price than in rich countries - so-called tiered pricing.
The US is concerned that such an approach might undermine drug
company patent rights, and believes that companies should be able
to choose their own pricing policies. Ellen 't Hoen of the charity
Medecins sans Frontie`res said: "The global fund is moving ahead
but nobody seems to be willing or able to discuss the basic
principles of how drugs will be procured. It's become clear that
there is a divide between the EU and the US on that."
Tony Burdon of Oxfam, the UK development NGO, said: "Unless
the fund is drastically increased and used to buy cheap, generic
medication, this start might only amount to lip service and
corporate welfare."
Ms 't Hoen said that generic anti-retroviral drugs to combat Aids
cost between a quarter and a fifth of those offered by US and
European drug companies. Using generic drugs to treat 5m patients
could cut costs from Dollars 5bn to about Dollars 1bn a year.
The Bush administration has pledged Dollars 200m, describing it as
a down payment. Seth Amgott of Oxfam America said that figure
appeared unfortunately to have put a cap on other governments'
contributions.
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