E-DRUG: UNAIDS on compulsory licencing, parallel import
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[AF press release on Peter Piot's speech at the African AIDS
conference currently going on in Lusaka, Zambia. WB]
AIDS-Africa-drugs: UN, African states press for affordable anti-AIDS
treatment
Agence France-Presse - September 12, 1999
LUSAKA, Sept 12 (AFP) - The United Nations and African states will
press western pharmaceutical companies to make effective drugs
available to the millions of Africans infected by AIDS, a UN official
said here Sunday.
UNAIDS executive director Peter Piot told an international conference
on AIDS in Africa that the gap between rich and poor countries
concerning care for people infected by the deadly virus was becoming
"morally reprehensible".
Piot said the UN, Senegal, and Cote d'Ivoire were negotiating with
pharamaceutical firms in order to make drugs more accessible to
millions of Africans.
But he added that while progress had been made, large-scale treatment
programs still did not exist on the continent.
Very few Africans - who spend an average of 10 dollars a year on
health care - can afford life-prolonging and pain-reducing drugs made
in the west, and which cost about 12,000 dollars a year per person.
"Access to even the most basic of generic medicines is woefully
inadequate," Piot said.
"Therefore, mechanisms such as compulsory licensing, transfer of
technology, parallel import of drugs and joint procurement by several
countries should be investigated," he added.
The UNAIDS chief said that while international treaties on trade and
intellectual property must be respected, "we surely have compelling
justification: AIDS is an unprecedented crisis, requiring special
measures."
Piot said by the end of last year, more than 33 million people, a
number that exceeds the entire population of Canada, were living with
HIV in Africa.
Western drug producers have come under fire for using patent rights
claims to block developing countries from making or marketing
equivalent medications.
...
990912
AF990942
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