E-DRUG: HANDS OFF our medicines! MSF launches new campaign to stop Europe shutting the door on generic medicines
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Join our campaign EUROPE! HANDS OFF OUR MEDICINE
In India this week, the European Commission is thrashing out a deal that
could block access to life-saving, affordable generic medicines for many
patients in developing countries.
Medecins Sans Frontieres relies on these medicines - produced in countries
like India and Brazil - to carry out its humanitarian work with some of the
world's poorest people. Millions more in developing countries depend on
these medicines to stay alive and healthy. But EC trade negotiators are
set on driving out generic medicines with devastating consequences for
patients. MSF's own work will be severely compromised:
'What the Europeans are doing is effectively snatching the medicines out of
our hands. Through the low cost of generic medicines, we have been able to
put more and more patients on AIDS medicines. This has meant a lot of hope
for our patients who can work again, who can bring up their children again.
But if Europe has its way and shuts off this source, we may have to break
that hope and we would just kill the success of what has been achieved here
in the last five years.' MSF doctor, Marius Mueller, Medical Coordinator,
Kenya.
Beyond events in New Delhi this week, these negotiations are part of a much
wider aggressive push by Europe to close access to generic medicines and
trade profits over human lives. The European Commission is actively
pursuing this damaging agenda both in ongoing bilateral trade talks with
countries in Asia and Latin America as well as driving it through in the
ACTA negotiations that are now near finalised.
Europe must be stopped in its tracks before it's too late, generic
medicines are wiped out and patients in poor countries pay the price.
For those whom these medicines mean life or death, Please join our campaign
and tell Europe to keep its HANDS OFF our medicine.
Click on the link below to send a letter to the EC Trade Commissioner,
Karel De Gucht, and European Union governments calling on him to put a halt
to Europe's destructive trade policies and to commit to an agenda that will
offer access to medicines for all.