Agence France Presse | November 7, 2001
BANGKOK - A high-profile activist alliance Wednesday urged ministers at this week's WTO talks in Doha to rewrite trade rules that bar millions of poverty-stricken AIDS sufferers from access to modern drugs.
The alliance, led by Medecins Sans Frontieres and Oxfam International, also announced plans to march on the United States embassy in Bangkok Friday in protest at its efforts to tighten up patent laws on drug manufacture.
"The finance ministers of the world are gathering today at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) meeting in Qatar," they said in a statement. "They could do a deal that would save millions of lives lost to preventable diseases across the developing world.
"Will they resist the pressure from the US and some other rich countries to put profits of drug companies before people's lives," asked the Thai NGO Coalition on AIDS.
The group of non-government organisations called on the finance ministers to clarify the controversial TRIPS (trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights) agreement.
US support for the patent law denies vital medicines to people suffering from tuberculosis, malaria and AIDS, it said, adding that less than five percent of Thailand's 750,000 AIDS patients had access to anti-retroviral drugs.
The alliance slammed Canada and the US for a "hugely hypocritical" attempt to pressure drug companies to dump their patents on drugs used to treat anthrax after the terrorist attacks of September 11.
"It shows that these governments will act to make drugs cheap when it's in their interest. But when the rest of the world is ill, it is profits that come first," it said.
The strenuous defence of corporate interests was killing innocent people and creating intense frustration among developing countries, they added.
"Many countries, including some in the European Union, recognise this injustice," the group said.
"They want to work to reform patent law on pharmaceuticals at the WTO's Qatar meeting. But, according to European Commission officials, the US is blocking these attempts."
An estimated 1.0 million of Thailand's 62 million population have been infected with HIV, the virus that leads to AIDS, and one third of those have already died.
In August, the public health ministry announced AIDS has become the leading cause of death in Thailand, as thousands of people infected a decade ago at the height of the epidemic begin to succumb to the disease.
AIDS activists here initially welcomed announcements from major drug companies that they would make their anti-retroviral treatments more affordable, but later said that despite the hype little had improved.Agence France Presse:
