Rockbites: 'Global Day of Action' to protest HIV-drug profiteering

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March 2001 • Rockbites Alternative Daily

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'Global Day of Action' to protest HIV-drug profiteering
5 March 2001

(As a human rights oriented Web site—we’re here to raise funds for human rights as well as to expose cutting edge pop—Rockbites occasionally brings you non-music-related stories. Here’s one.)

The Global Treatment Action Campaign (GTAC), a worldwide activist network dedicated to ensuring access to treatment for HIV and other diseases, today launches a week-long campaign to call attention to HIV-drug profiteering in South Africa. In the US, demonstrations are planned for Boston, New York city, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Washington, DC; while in the UK protesters will gather in Birmingham, Crawley, Kent, London, Manchester, Norwich, Leeds, Edinburgh, and Glasgow.
    Over the past three years more than 40 multinational drug companies have banded together to try to block South Africa’s government from ensuring access to live-saving drugs, including drugs for the treatment of HIV/AIDS.
    According to GTAC, 95% of HIV-infected individuals worldwide are denied affordable access to life-extending medications. Today the drug coalition, including (among others) Bayer, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Glaxo, Eli Lilly, Merck, and SmithKline Beecham Pharmaceuticals, will argue in court to extend their three-year blockade against the affordable drug access intended by South Africa’s Medicines And Related Substances Control Amendment Act.
    Joining GTAC to support the South African government are non-governmental organizations Doctors Without Borders/ Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), Oxfam, and others. MSF has called for the United States and the European Union to take public stands supporting South Africa’s efforts—which comply with international trade agreements—to improve access to medicine. | Treatment Action Campaign (South Africa) | | Global Treatment Access Campaign | | press release | | MSF's Access To Medicines Campaign | | top of page |

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