Posts tagged Access Campaign
For the first time, children in Tajikistan with multi drug-resistant tuberculosis are receiving treatment for the life threatening disease. Learn more about MSF’s Access to Essential Medicines Campaign.
The Need For Urgent HIV and TB Treatment in Myanmar.
Tens of thousands of people living with HIV and tuberculosis (TB) in Myanmar are unable to access lifesaving antiretroviral therapy (ART), a dire situation exacerbated by the recent cancellation of a new round of funding from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria.
“Lives in the Balance,” a report from Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), outlines the situation for people affected by HIV and tuberculosis (TB), with a special focus on multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB), in Myanmar today. It calls for urgent funding and assistance to be made available by the international donor community to help Myanmar close the devastating gap between people’s need and people’s access to treatment for HIV and TB.
Infographic by Will Owen
Tuesday, MSF marched in the streets of DC with other organizations at the Internetional AIDS Conference. We told pharma to put people before profits. Millions die without access to affordable generic meds, we marched and will continue to march for them.
Novartis’s Day in Court Set for July 10, 2012
India’s Supreme Court will now begin hearing a challenge to the country’s patent law by the Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis on July 10, 2012.
The Novartis Supreme Court case is the final act in a legal battle that stretches back six years and has significant ramifications for India’s future capacity to produce low-cost generic medicines for its people, and for patients across developing countries.
Given the possible implications for generic production and the availability of affordable medicines from India, MSF, along with other treatment providers, patient groups and affected communities, has appealed to Novartis to drop its case against the “pharmacy of the developing world”.
MSF launched a social media campaign calling for Novartis to stop its legal attacks against India which threaten access to medicines for its patients. To participate in the Stop Novartis campaign, visit www.msfaccess.org/STOPnovartis
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Access to Medicines: India Offers First Compulsory License
Groundbreaking Move Sets Precedent for Overcoming Drug Price Barriers
In a landmark case, the Indian Patent Office has issued the first-ever compulsory license in India to a generic drug manufacturer. This effectively ends German pharmaceutical company Bayer’s monopoly in India on the drug sorafenib tosylate, used to treat kidney and liver cancer.
The Patent Office acted on the basis that Bayer had not only failed to price the drug at an accessible and affordable level, but that it had also failed to ensure that the medicine was available in sufficient and sustainable quantities within India.
“We have been following this case closely because newer drugs to treat HIV are patented in India, and as a result are priced out of reach,” said Dr. Tido von Schoen-Angerer, director of the Doctors Without Borders Access Campaign. “But this decision marks a precedent that offers hope: it shows that new drugs under patent can also be produced by generic makers at a fraction of the price, while royalties are paid to the patent holder. This compensates patent holders while at the same time ensuring that competition can bring down prices.”
Competition from the generic version will bring the price of the drug in India down dramatically, from over US$5,500 per month to close to US$175 per month — a price reduction of nearly 97 per cent.
What’s at stake with the legal case from the pharmaceutical company Novartis in India? Find out in less than 30 seconds with the video above!
For the past 6 years drug giant Novartis has been pursuing a legal case in India that threatens access to life-saving affordable medicines for millions across the developing world.
As the case now opens before the Indian Supreme Court, join MSF & tell Novartis that people matter more than profits.
Join in on the action and tweet this line:
Help #MSF protect access to affordable meds, tell @Novartis to drop its case vs #India http://ow.ly/8XPoQ #STOPnovartis
For more information about the case and what actions you can take go here.
A majority of the drugs used by the American government’s PEPFAR HIV treatment program in Africa are from India. Anything that stifles the Indian ability to produce affordable HIV drugs will also affect the American program to create an AIDS-free generation. They will have to rely on expensive patented drugs, which means treating fewer patients.
Leena Menghaney, representative of Doctors Without Borders in India, quoted in The Washington Post’s coverage of the ambitious free-trade agreement being negotiated between India and the European Union that could severely curtail India’s production and export of affordable drugs for millions living with HIV in developing countries.
Demonstrators in Delhi, India, protest against proposed provisions for a free-trade agreement between India and the EU that would limit access to lifesaving generic medicines in the developing world.
MSF spoke out for neglected patients in 2011 by waging campaigns for better practices around childhood malnutrition, for greater access to medicines for those who need them most, for the medical needs that exist in ever-expanding slums, and more.
Photo: India © Rico Gustva/APN+
Access to Essential Medicines: Ten Stories That Mattered in 2011
8. Stuck in The Middle: Drug Companies Push Up Prices for Patients in Middle-Income Countries
People living with HIV in middle-income countries like India, Brazil or Thailand are facing huge hikes in the costs of AIDS medicines—at a time when the pharmaceutical industry sees these countries as potentially lucrative markets for high-priced drugs, and “blockbuster” drugs go off-patent in wealthy countries.
This year, a number of drug companies confirmed an ongoing trend by refusing to extend standardized price discounts to middle-income countries—something which was previously routine practice. ViiV, Merck, Johnson & Johnson, and Abbott all now specifically exclude middle-income countries from standardized price discounts for some or all of their drugs. Countries are thus forced to negotiate on a case-by-case basis, which is likely to lead to higher prices.
This move ignores the fact that the majority of people in middle-income countries can’t afford to pay high prices for medicines. To add to the problem, these countries are now losing the support from global health mechanisms like the Global Fund.
Photo: India 2009 © Sami Siva
Access to Essential Medicines: Ten Stories That Mattered in 2011
5. Turning the Screws on Affordable Medicines Produced in India
India’s role as the “pharmacy of the developing world” is once more under fire this year from both governments and multinational drug companies.
Five years after the drug company Novartis first tried to get a critical part of India’s pro-health patent law thrown out, the company is back for the final round of its legal battle against the Indian government—this time in the Supreme Court.
If Novartis is successful, India will be forced to grant far more patents on medicines than they currently do, blocking the production of more affordable versions of medicines patented elsewhere, and so keeping newer drugs out of reach of those who need them the most.
Photo: Belgium 2010 © Bruno de Cock/MSF
Access to Essential Medicines: Ten Stories That Mattered in 2011
4. Numbers of Patients on Treatment for Drug-Resistant TB Remains Catastrophically Low
Governments are not meeting the challenge of providing treatment for the rising numbers of people infected with drug-resistant tuberculosis (DR-TB), which has infected around five million people over the past ten years.
DR-TB—which occurs when the TB bacterium becomes resistant to anti-TB drugs—can be cured in the majority of cases, but many people go undiagnosed and untreated because of the difficulties involved in getting a correct diagnosis, and the expensive and complex treatment.
In what many hope will prove to be a breakthrough development, a new diagnostic test has been rolled out this year—including by MSF in seven countries—that can drastically reduce the time it takes to diagnose DR-TB, from several weeks to under two hours. Although the test is very expensive and is not as simple a test as is ultimately needed, the fact that it’s now a lot easier to diagnose people should spur governments into putting many more on treatment.
Photo: Armenia 2010 © Bruno De Cock/MSF
Access to Essential Medicines: Ten Stories That Mattered in 2011
3. Progress in the Fight Against HIV, TB, and Malaria Under Threat as Health Funding Falters
Donor support to fight diseases that hit the poor hardest has been waning for a while, but the announcement by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria in November that it was cancelling its annual funding round because donors had not paid up was nonetheless a shock.
Countries will now have to wait until 2014—at the earliest—before they can receive new funds to put more people on treatment for HIV or drug-resistant TB, or roll out diagnostic tests for malaria, for example. The Fund has put a stop-gap solution in place that can prevent treatment interruptions in the meantime, but it’s one that leaves countries hanging on the thinnest of lifelines.
Photo: South Africa 2011 © Samantha Reinders
Access to Essential Medicines: Ten Stories That Mattered in 2011
1. Getting Ahead of the Wave of New HIV Infections to Turn the Tide on AIDS
Three decades into the HIV/AIDS pandemic, and after 30 million deaths, landmark scientific findings this year show that providing people with HIV treatment early not only saves their lives but can reduce the risk of transmitting the virus to others by 96 percent—in effect demonstrating that early treatment of HIV is also prevention.
The question now is therefore how to make expansion of treatment both feasible and affordable—a challenge MSF has been grappling with in its projects since beginning to treat HIV in developing countries more than ten years ago.
MSF has learned, through experience, how care can reach more people in resource-limited settings—for example by decentralizing treatment from central hospitals to health centers and to community health posts, so it is available closer to where people live; and by shifting medical tasks from doctors to nurses, and in turn to community health workers, to overcome human resource shortages.
Ensuring treatment is affordable is equally critical—competition among generic producers is what has brought prices for HIV medicines down by more than 99 percent over the last decade. But more must be done to rein in drug prices, particularly for newer medicines.
Photo: Kenya 2011 © Sven Torfinn
Dear Supporters,
Thank you for joining our call to action urging Johnson & Johnson to license the company’s patents on three lifesaving HIV/AIDS drugs to the Medicines Patent Pool, a mechanism designed to lower prices of HIV medicines and increase access to them for people in the developing world.
Despite continuing to earn record profits and a company credo that calls for putting patients first, on December 19, Johnson & Johnson continued to turn its back on people living with HIV/AIDS in many developing countries by telling the Pool it refused to license its patents on the HIV drugs rilpivirine, darunavir, and etravirine.
Over the past two years, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has been urging Johnson & Johnson, and other companies holding HIV drug patents, to take this critical step of joining the Pool. The Pool would license patents on HIV drugs to other manufacturers and the resulting competition would dramatically reduce prices, making them much more affordable in the developing world and allow new combination medicines.
In refusing to join the Medicines Patent Pool, Johnson & Johnson says there is no urgency for making these drugs widely available in developing countries. That’s simply not true. MSF now provides treatment to more than 180,000 people living with HIV worldwide, and is beginning to witness the inevitable, natural phenomenon of treatment failure, whereby people develop resistance to the drugs they are taking and need to graduate to newer medicines.
Furthermore, rilpivirine, darunavir, and etravirine were identified among the key drug formulations needed for HIV treatment by the Medicines Patent Pool, UNITAID and the World Health Organization’s HIV/AIDS Department.
The fight for our patients does not end here with this announcement from Johnson & Johnson. MSF will continue to press Johnson & Johnson and other companies holding patents on essential HIV/AIDS medicines to join the Medicines Patent Pool.
Ultimately, it is about breaking the double standard of access to essential medicines for patients living with HIV/AIDS in developing countries. For the sake of patients who are resistant to today’s treatment as well as patients of tomorrow who are still waiting for access to improved drugs, MSF will continue to call for real access to affordable medicines.
2011 marks the ten-year anniversary of two events that have helped shape people’s ability in developing countries to access quality, affordable medical care.
First, the signing of the Doha Declaration, in which governments affirmed the need to prioritize health over trade: access to affordable medicines over intellectual property rights. Second, is the decision to create a “war chest” to fight the developing world’s biggest killer diseases: HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria. Through the Global Fund, unprecedented levels of donor money were channeled towards saving lives. But a decade later, the struggle to access medicines in developing countries continues and global health is suffering from a sudden shortfall in funding, as donor countries leave the Fund in dire financial straights.
These are some of the barriers to medical care that people in developing countries encounter every day. Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières’s (MSF) Access Campaign was created just over ten years ago in order to try, with others, to bring down some of these barriers that restricted our ability as a medical humanitarian organization to give patients the best care we can. Read the Access to Essential Medicines: Ten Stories That Mattered in 2011
Photo: Kenya 2011 © Bruno De Cock/MSF
Doctors Without Borders/ Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is an international medical humanitarian organization working in more than 60 countries to assist people whose survival is threatened by violence, neglect, or catastrophe. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
