Pharmaceutical industry officials said late last month that talks over access to generic drugs, including antiretrovirals, are "deadlocked," despite optimism from officials at the World Trade Organisation, Reuters reports. The talks have been stalled since members missed a December 31, 2002, deadline to reach an agreement. U.S. negotiators in February refused to sign a deal under the Doha declaration to allow developing nations to override patent protections to produce generic versions of drugs to combat public health epidemics such as AIDS unless wording was included to specify which diseases constitute a public health epidemic.
Equity in Health
message for WHO member country delegations to 56th World Health Assembly
There is an urgent need for new vaccines, diagnostics, and treatments to address high mortality and morbidity associated with infectious disease. The current system of motivating research and development favours the needs of people in developed countries, while neglecting many diseases that primarily affect people in developing countries. This is according to a message from Medicines Sans Frontiers about access to medicines, made to the 56th World Health Assembly (WHA) to be held between May 19-28.
New leader, new hope for WHO
In the mid-1990s the World Health Organisation seemed doomed to either "flounder in a morass of petty corruption and ineffective bureaucracy" or to die. Neither of these happened. Instead, Gro Harlem Brundtland, who took office as director general in July 1998, restored the organisation's reputation as a credible force in global health. Last week the World Health Assembly approved Jong-Wook Lee as Brundtland's successor. Unlike Brundtland, Lee is not being charged with saving the organisation but with harnessing its potential to transform the lives of the poorest.
Poverty and Inequity in the Era of Globalization: Our Need to Change and to Re-conceptualize
The best way to improve the health and nutrition of the poor still is to have them move out of poverty. For equity to be achieved, economic growth in the development process needs to be deliberately geared towards the needs of the poor. Focusing on sustainable poverty alleviation is inseparable from bringing about greater equity. A focus on both tasks is necessary to achieve the indispensable reduction in the existing rich-poor gap. Focusing on poverty alleviation alone can end up as charity in disguise. Focusing on equity is a step towards social justice. Equity and social justice in health and nutrition are one and the same thing: in health and nutrition, social inequities are always unfair. This is an extract from an article in the International Journal for Equity in Health 2003.
U.N. SPECIAL ENVOY FOR HIV/AIDS IN AFRICA 'AGHAST' AT CONNECTION BETWEEN HUNGER, HIV/AIDS
U.N. Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa Stephen Lewis, during a speech at the Global Health Council's annual conference in Washington, D.C., said that he was "aghast" at the way in which "AIDS was deepening hunger and hunger was deepening AIDS" in Southern Africa. According to Lewis, Africa "reaps what the world sows, and with a vengeance."
who dg pledges help in hiv/aids battle
Dr. Jong-Wook Lee, the newly elected director general of the World Health Organisation, said that he would make combating HIV/AIDS in the developing world a major priority, the Boston Globe reports. Lee said that he would fulfill the WHO's promise to provide three million HIV-positive people in resource-poor countries with antiretroviral drugs by 2005.
zambia hard hit by aids
The southern African country of Zambia has set a new record - one which no country would wish to hold. The average life expectancy in the country is 33 years - by far the lowest in the world - and it is all due to Aids.
Activists continue HIV/AIDS protests in south africa
South Africa's National Association of People Living with HIV/AIDS (NAPWA) on continued a protest outside the Johannesburg offices of a drug multinational as part of its "Black Easter" campaign. The campaign was launched to "convince pharmaceutical companies to provide free antiretroviral drugs in the country" and included demonstrations outside the offices of the Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Association (PMA), NAPWA national director, Nkululeko Nxesi, told PlusNews.
Glaxo Will Further Cut Prices of AIDS Drugs to Poor Nations
GlaxoSmithKline, the world's largest maker of AIDS drugs, has announced that it is further cutting the prices of these drugs by as much as half in poor countries. The price of Combivir, the company's popular AIDS therapy that combines two drugs in a single pill, has been cut to 90 cents a day, from $1.70, a reduction of 47 percent, the company said. With the reduction, the medicine is available at a price roughly equivalent to some generic versions of AIDS drugs, it said. The price of Combivir in the United States is about $18 a day.
Health equity information resource
"Awareness of health equity as an international issue has reached the point where sufficient momentum has built up to stimulate the types of collaborative action that are necessary to monitor and advocate for health equity worldwide." (Whitehead M, Dahlgren G, Gilson L. Developing the policy response to inequities in health: a global perspective. In: Evans et al (eds), 2001). Whitehead and Evans argue for practical initiatives including enlarging the health equity policy community, by building or strengthening networks of researchers and advocates. As a step along these lines an information resource has been published detailing organisations, people, networks and resources relevant to work on health inequities, covering those with a strong interest in health inequities, as well as outlining the health equity interest of some of the large international and funding organisations. The emphasis in this document is on low and middle income countries since work regarding health inequalities in the richer industrialised countries is advanced in comparison.