MidnightCall Magazine
.jpg)
News From Israel MagazineGeneric AIDS Drugs
I received a letter from a street vendor in Guatemala concerning generic AIDS drugs. He enclosed a news article concerning CAFTA (Central American Free Trade Agreement), which includes the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Costa Rica, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua. The
agreement was crafted to protect the wealthy pharmaceutical companies in the US from having their patents copied by small companies and making generic drugs to be sold to poor countries. Doctors Without Borders pioneered the use of generic AIDS drugs in Guatemala, where it treats 1,700 patients. The agency’s most widely used medication is a generic version of the anti-viral cocktail AZT/3TC, which it purchases from a supplier in India for $216 per patient per year.
Last year, Guatemala’s social security system paid $4,818 per patient for the original made by Glaxo Smith Kline! I believe the multimilliondollar drug corporations should sell their AIDS drugs to poor countries at cost. Even though they wouldn’t be making any profit off the backs of desperately poor people living in poverty, they would be saving lives, helping to keep families together, and lessening the growing number of children who become orphaned when both parents die from AIDS complications. Furthermore, giving AIDS medication to HIV — positive pregnant women prevents their infants from being born with HIV 90 percent of the time! So please don’t call me a communist or a socialist. United States trade officials readily acknowledge they are trying to strengthen intellectual property laws worldwide to protect drug companies and other US interests.
Presently the World Trade Organization (WTO) has rules that permit the 148-member nations to override patents and authorize generic production of name-brand medicines that are needed to protect the public against diseases such as HIV/ AIDS. But under CAFTA, the six-member countries would be unable to exercise this rule. Approximately 40 million people worldwide are infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, and 275,000 of them live in the six Central American countries. Seventy-eight thousand of them live in Guatemala. But 80 percent of Guatemalans who need these AIDS drugs lack them. Hold on, it gets worse! Discrimination against HIV-infected people is rampant in Guatemala. Those who reveal their illness risk losing their jobs and being shunned by family and friends. Those who go to rallies to protest against CAFTA typically wear paper bags over their heads so they can’t be recognized.
The giant American pharmaceutical companies claim they spent more than $38 billion on research in 2004 for new drugs for hundreds of different diseases. Now if they spent that much on research, how many billions more do you think they made in profit? Our family has vacationed in four of the Central American countries. The indigenous people reminded us of our own American Indians. I am certain the AIDS pandemic did not begin in Central America; it was taken there. Ask your congressman to pass legislation that will make it easier for poor countries to purchase inexpensive generic AIDS medication to relieve pain and suffering. Proverbs 14:20–21 states: “The poor is hated even of his own neighbour: but the rich hath many friends. He that despiseth his neighbour sinneth: but he that hath mercy on the poor, happy is he.”