After the historic victory in South Africa, in which mass protest forced a major retreat by the world's leading pharmaceutical companies, DENISE MCDOWELL, Director, George House Trust and JOHN NICHOLSON, Chief Executive, UK Public Health Association look at the issues at stake in the campaign.
T he victory in the South African court case was a victory for people with HIV. It was a victory for campaigning. This was despite all the best efforts of governments and multinationals and international lawyers. It was a victory for public health -although there is still a long way to go. It was a victory for developing countries. South Africa stood up to the pharmaceutical companies and the USA and the free market as a whole. And they won.
the High Commissioner for South Africa in London said when the case first started, by standing up to the drug giants, South Africa doing something that the Clintons had never managed to. And it was a victory for anti-capitalists. Everywhere. All in all, it was a "victory for comIndeed, it was a victory for just companies, who used the World Trade Organisation and the courts to put profits before people.
Mil or which makes it so outrageous that our government was backing the wrong side e people die from HIV in order to protect the profits, the patents and worst of all the favourable regard of the multi-nationals Labour means business" was th slogan adopted before the 1997 General Election. Exactly so. Our firmly in support of the rich drug companies and against the poor and sick South Africa In contrast, the public support for South Africa was because the issue was so clear, it was an issue of life and death.
The UK government report into oharmaccutical industry competi tiveness rejected cheaper drugs for developing countries"pareais arc the lifeblood" of the industry, exactly the same time the non-governmental organisations throughour the world of individual people with HIV were combining to put the brakes on the unregulated drive In its appalling choice of words, Conectad of Drug Drop the case now dead London solidarity: protestors demonstrate against drug comparies outside South Africa House "patients" • such as those living with HIV in the developing world.
Prime Minister Blair endorsed this personally: "the UK must offer a supportive environ• ment". How telling. No such supportive environment is offered peo. ple secking refuge here.
Even Oxfam, which has rightly campaigned against the voucher for affordable health drugs for all, was taken aback at what it called "government capitulation to big busiwhat happens when a task force investigating an industry is stuffed very multi-nationals whose activities need regulating.
According to overnidad membership of the 12- person task force included Astra Zeneca, Glaxo Well-come Novartis, MSD, and both the ABPI President and DirAlso on the force is Lord Sainsbury, whose position is Minister for Science and Innovation.
Of course he
DECIOUSEY Chair of 1 ainsbury pic, one of superstore chains Competition Comm ission for alleged anticompetitive practices -and the principal backer biotechnology company Diatech, Sainsbury Laboratory the John Innes Centre, genetic engi. neering centre Norwich In acting thus, government abandons govern. inequalities.
Ensuring we are - all - healthy is not ameaabic to the pront molve of the pharmaceutical companies who exist to make money for the tew. Public bealth is not safe in private hands.
But the issuc is much broader drugs aone. in this respect, Mbeki has always been right. For widespread poverty, where access to food, water, basic amenitics are totally lacking, the solution is bigger than discounts on drugs. Any realistic solution must be nonsuc, it must involve governments - all governments -taking action on a wide range of issues.
This includes tackling head-on the global anti-health forces, such as the multi-nationals who aspire to developing products as arms and tobacco.
It includes all western governpressing ine mullnationals to drop all their legal actions, including Brazil, where the battleground has now shifted. It includes governments playing their care is provided, publicly funded and accountable, for all the peoples THe Wore Where does a special "fund" fit in with this?
For some now Gordon Brown, in his stated Budget commitments to tackling incqualities in the UK and world-wide, and Clare Short, in her pronouncemeats of making giobaisation work for the poor", have been promoting the initiation of a multigovernment fund to assist developcountries obtaining vital medicines.