Heat-stable ritonavir approved, ending treatment stranglehold for people living with HIV/AIDSread more
Make It Happen Campaign Update: UNITAID Board still discussing finer details of the Patent Pool Entity read more
New European Parliament Working Group on Innovation & Access launches with support of Access Campaign read more
U.S. health care legislation could limit access read more
MSF responds to World Health Organization’s new HIV treatment guidelines read more
MSF sends letter to EU Ministers of Health regarding antibiotic resistance read more
We’re Moving Along Nicely……
Three weeks in and so far nearly 11,000 people have submitted over 90,000 emails directly to the CEOs of drug companies. This is great news! So far we are live in the US, UK, Austria, Germany, Belgium, Norway, South Africa, Switzerland, France, Luxembourg, Sweden, Brazil, and the Czech Republic. Ça roule !!
Events
We have had two events over the past week related to the push for the patent pool, one in Brussels and another in Geneva.
Click here to learn more about these events.
Spreading the word wherever we can
The beauty of online campaigning is that it ends up in places you wouldn’t really imagine. In the UK, our webmaster’s football team have signed up to a man. Here’s the photographic proof:
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From left to right: Kevin, Richard, Stephen, Simon, and Kenny - all participants in the Make It Happen Campaign. |
In addition, the Campaign director’s suitcase came back from a recent trip to Washington D.C. bulging with letters signed by attendees of this October’s American Academy of Pediatrics Conference.
And in Brussels, five members of the European Parliament (EP) cross-political groups, have introduced a written declaration calling for the EU to support the UNITAID patent pool and calling for the pharmaceutical industries to put their HIV/AIDS related patents in the pool– once 368 MEPs have signed the Declaration, it will become an official EP, as a whole, statement in support of the patent pool.
To download a copy of the written declaration, click here
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Quote of the Week
"We are sitting on a treatment time bomb. We must reduce the price of second-line medicines and less toxic first-line medicines before millions need them. We cannot sleepwalk into a situation where we can only afford to treat a tiny proportion of those infected."
David Borrow, British MP and chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on AIDS. The report states that the numbers of people living with HIV will rise five-fold to 50 million by 2030.
Updates from the drug companies
Most drug companies have now made contact with UNITAID about the patent pool as a result of our campaign. This is great news and we need to keep the pressure up on them to commit publicly to the pool.
To learn more about the Make It Happen campaign, click here.
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Indian Court Gives Boost to Access to Medicines As Latest Appeal By Bayer is Rejected
UNITAID Patent Pool: Innovative Initiative Designed to Boost Access to Medicines is Adopted
MSF Clinical Officer Olesi Ellemani Pasulani's reflections on AIDS treatment in Malawi
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