Health GAP Coalition - New Group for International Treatment Access

Our last issue (AIDS Treatment News #314) mentioned an "as-yet-unnamed effort" for broadening global access to essential treatments for AIDS and other diseases; on March 14 this new group was named the Health GAP (Global Access Project) Coalition. Health GAP Coalition is sending five U.S. activists to the March 25-27 meeting in Geneva, Switzerland on compulsory licensing of patents on essential medical technologies (http://www.cptech.org/march99-cl/), and is also helping to mobilize support for the HOPE for Africa Act (see "Africa Trade Legislation--April Lobby Day," below).

During the next year the Health GAP Coalition will mobilize around the World AIDS Conference (in Durban, South Africa, July 9-14, 2000) on issues of dramatically increasing worldwide access to AIDS treatments of all kind.

This group was started by Alan Berkman, M.D., a New York physician who treats low-income and formerly homeless persons with AIDS and has worked internationally, with help from members of Doctors Without Borders, ACT UP/New York, ACT UP/Philadelphia, Search for a Cure, Ralph Nader's Consumer Project on Technology, AIDS Treatment News, and others.


Africa Trade Legislation--
April Lobby Day
The Health GAP Coalition is one of many organizations supporting the HOPE for Africa Act, introduced in Congress by Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D., Illinois) and 30 cosponsors. Among other provisions, this bill would prevent the U.S. government from threatening or pressuring sub-Saharan African countries to force them to do more to protect intellectual property than is required by GATT or other international treaties. Currently the U.S. is using such pressure on behalf of domestic and multinational pharmaceutical companies, denying lifesaving medical treatment to potentially millions of people in order to support corporate patent rights--often rights the companies do not even intend to use in those countries (see "Compulsory Licensing for Bridging the Gap--Treatment Access in Developing Countries," AIDS Treatment News #314, March 5, 1999).

Many supporters of the HOPE for Africa Act are opposing another Africa trade bill, the African Growth and Opportunity Act. An analysis of this bill by the South Centre--a Geneva-based organization which works with governments of developing countries--examines some good aspects and many more bad ones. The basic problem with the bill seems to be that U.S. commercial and ideological interests had nearly complete control of the agenda, and terms are to be dictated to African countries while their most important interests are ignored. A copy of the report, "Lopsided Rules of North-South Engagement: The African Growth and Opportunity Act," can be downloaded from http://www.cptech.org/ip/health/trade/. A community letter supporting the Jackson bill and opposing the other has been signed by over 30 AIDS organizations, including AIDS Action Council, National Minority AIDS Council, National Association of People with AIDS, Gay Men's Health Crisis, AIDS Project Los Angeles, and ACT UP/Golden Gate, ACT UP/New York, and ACT UP/Philadelphia, and given to all members of the House and Senate.

The text and Congressional debates on both bills are available through the Library of Congress, at http://thomas.loc.gov (search for 'Africa').

A day of demonstrations and Congressional lobbying on these bills will be held in mid-April (the date was not set when this issue went to press).

For more information about the Health GAP Coalition or the April lobby day, contact Asia Russell, asia@critpath.org, or through ACT UP/Philadelphia at 215-731-1844, or P.O. Box 22439, Land Title Station, Philadelphia PA 19110.