New Campaign Fights for Universal Access to HIV Meds
Following a three-day meeting last week in Bangkok, AIDS activists and public health officials from around the world devised a comprehensive global campaign aimed at bridging the gap between impoverished nations and major pharmaceutical companies, which hold the patents on several lifesaving HIV medications (ipsnews.net, 11/28).
Participants of last week’s International Conference on Compulsory Licensing: Innovation and Access for All included officials from India, Brazil, Indonesia, Malaysia, Cambodia, Thailand and the United States—all of whom will meet at the World Health Organization in January 2008.
According to a background note by Intellectual Property Watch, an online publication based in Geneva, the main goal of the campaign is “finding an optimal way to boost research and development of affordable health care products so people, particularly in the developing countries, can receive treatment for diseases, with an emphasis on neglected conditions including tuberculosis, malaria and HIV/AIDS.”
The proposal is currently being drafted by the WHO’s Intergovernmental Working Group on Public Health, Innovation and Intellectual Property.
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Beth Benne, RN, is HIV negative, but
the virus has impacted her life. She currently supervises a biannual HIV/AIDS awareness week as
the director of the student health center at Pierce College, a
community commuter school in Woodland Hills, California.
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Overheard in the Women's Forum
"I think that it's OK to be angry. I am sometimes—it's natural—we are HIV positive. but I always try to not let myself stay there too long. Let yourself feel you are human. You should not beat yourself up about being angry."
