Pfizer in News

Publication : Media Corp News Asia
Provider : Channel News Asia
July 14, 2004

Protests at AIDS forum amid row over cash, cheap drugs

Asia BANGKOK : Protesters disrupted the world AIDS forum with a series of demonstrations targeting Western politicians and pharmaceutical companies to demand cheaper drugs and more money to tackle the pandemic.

Activists jeered a French minister and halted a speech by the head of drug giant Pfizer as tempers flared amid complaints that efforts to tackle the pandemic were being hampered by a cash crisis.

The organisers of the conference blamed protests at the last conference in Barcelona two years ago for the smaller 50-strong delegation from the US, the biggest financial contributor to the fight against AIDS.

But UN Secretary General Kofi Annan kept the pressure on the US and demanded it show the same commitment to the battle against AIDS as the war on terror.

Terrorism could kill thousands but "here we have an epidemic that is killing millions," he said in an interview with the BBC.

French President Jacques Chirac, in an speech read here, also made a veiled attack on the US, saying its bilateral trade deals eroded a vital international deal to provide cheap drugs to the Third World.

A group of 30 activists on Tuesday stormed the main debating arena at the 15th International AIDS Conference, with its theme of Access for All, as Pfizer chief executive Hank McKinnell prepared to speak.

Carrying banners saying "Patient rights, not patent rights." and chanting "free the people, break the patents", the group halted the meeting.

Activists have criticised the industrialised nations for failing to contribute enough money and blamed Western drug giants for high-priced antiretroviral (ARV) drugs.

They have have had a dramatic effect in cutting AIDS deaths but are unaffordable in many of the worst-hit developing nations.

A Thai activist was allowed to address the meeting of some 200 people before they left. "Expensive ARVs prevent access for all," said Boonniem Wongjaikam, of the Thai Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS. "We need cheap ARVs."

Generic drugs manufacturers have copied patented ARVs and sold them at low prices. Activists say it has helped drive down the cost of treatments from up to 12,000 dollars a person two years ago to several hundred dollars.

Members of the French activist group ACT UP earlier jeered French Minister for Development and Cooperation Xavier Darcos, and said similar "actions" were planned.

Darcos was about to deliver the Chirac speech when about a dozen protestors left their seats in the auditorium and stood in front of the podium, clutching a banner reading "G8 must pay" and chanting in French "Ten thousand deaths (from AIDS) per day, Darcos wants more".

Leaders in the fight against AIDS have repeatedly used the conference in the Thai capital to call for more money to tackle the crisis that has killed more than 20 million people.

The UN has estimated 20 billion dollars will be needed annually by 2007 because of the growing threat from the epidemic, nearly four times current levels.

But experts involved in trying to achieve the UN's goal of getting anti-HIV drugs to three million needy people by the end of 2005 said money was not the only problem.

They needed to create an army of doctors, nurses, pharmacists and health workers including in some countries where trained staff were dying in droves from AIDS.

The number of children orphaned by AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa will also top 18 million by 2010, the UN and US warned at the conference.

The number of children who have lost one or both parents to AIDS will surge by more than 50 percent from the current 12.3 million in the region worst ravaged by the AIDS pandemic, according to a multi-agency report issued here.

"The orphan crisis is arguably the cruellest legacy of this whole pandemic," UNICEF executive director Carol Bellamy told reporters.

Some 38 million people are living with HIV and the UN has warned of an explosion of cases in Asia and Eastern Europe unless immediate action is taken.

Nearly five million more infections occurred in 2003, the highest in any single year.