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African court victory against Western pharmaceutical giants doesn't mean meds for the poor

Less than a month after a landmark victory against several international drug giants in the Pretoria High Court, AIDS campaigners are warning the South African government and global pharmaceutical companies that the battle for affordable AIDS medicine is far from over.

AIDS activists alike were overwhelmed when the High Court in Pretoria announced that 39 leading pharmaceutical firms had dropped their lawsuit against Thabo Mbeki's government. The companies had taken the South African government to court over its legislation allowing the import or manufacture of generic versions of patented anti-AIDS drugs.

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"We've gained a major victory against the multinationals," said Zackie Achmat, president of the South African Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), who is himself HIV-positive and who spearheaded the fight for AIDS drugs in South Africa.

But the battle to provide anti-retrovirals to millions of HIV-positive South Africans is far from over, and will rage on many different fronts. One of the problems is Mbeki's government-- which still questions the link between HIV and AIDS. Another problem: powerful drug companies that aim to fight for their "intellectual property" rights to profitable AIDS medicines developed often with public money.

The drug giants stressed that South Africa must proceed in accordance with the Agreement of Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights-- TRIPS.

This is the catch, because the Pretoria ruling does not necessarily mean that South Africa can now import generic versions of medicines still protected by patents (parallel importation), nor will it enable South African companies to manufacture cheap local generic versions of patented drugs (compulsory licensing).

At the first AIDS summit in Africa held recently in the Nigerian capital of Abuja, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan disclosed that six of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies had promised him that they would provide cheaper HIV and AIDS drugs.

Annan called for the establishment of a special 7-10 billion dollar international fund to fight AIDS in Africa, which is killing more than 6,000 people every day. According to UN figures, 16 million of the 22 million people who have died because of AIDS were African.

However, Annan stopped short of implicating himself in the present heated debate on generic anti-retrovirals. Instead, he called on developing countries to produce and import drugs under licence "within the terms of international trade agreements."

Developing countries have already indicated that they would urge the World Trade Organization (WTO) to remove drug patent laws which make affordable treatment impossible for most HIV and AIDS patients on this continent where more than half of the population subsists on a dollar a day.

TAC strongly attacked Bristol-Myers Squibb for not realizing its March 14th offer to provide South Africa (and some other sub-Saharan countries) with its anti-AIDS drugs for just one US dollar per patient daily.

In its statement of May 8th, TAC claimed that the BMS offer was "a public relations stunt designed to alleviate activist and legal pressure..." because the price reduction was available only to governments and NGOs.

No sub-Saharan African government distributes anti-retrovirals as part of the triple-drug therapy, and there is no NGO in South Africa with the capability of administering the triple-drug therapy to a significant number of people, TAC stressed.

AIDS campaigners also rebuked Mbeki's government for the delay in realizing most of their promises-- among them, implementing a national program mother-to-child HIV prevention. Presently, anti-AIDS drugs like AZT are only given to health workers, while the government is conducting trials with Nevirapine, but only on pregnant women (at just two hospitals in each of the nine provinces).

Despite earlier promises, Mbeki's government does not provide anti-retroviral drugs on public health care on the grounds that even with such a reduction in price, the drugs are still too costly, and toxicity and follow-up care are problematic.

To force Mbeki to act, TAC and other local anti-AIDS lobbyists are threatening further legal action-- which would turn the tables, putting the victors in the Pretoria suit on the defensive.