At the beginning of this month the Student Stop Aids Steering Committee took the Patent Pool campaign to the head quarters of two influential pharmaceutical companies to ensure that they too were commemorating World Aids Day. In the eve of the UNITAID conference this was the perfect opportunity to highlight the appeal of the student community and discuss the concerns and queries of companies with the potential to make the long-campaigned for Patent Pool a reality.

Gilead sciences who have already publicly shown a positive approach towards the concept, extended their support and welcomed the scrolls signed by hundreds of students from Universities across the UK, petitioning for pharmaceutical involvement in the scheme that would facilitate access to treatment. GlaxoSmithKline who have previously criticised the notion, openly discussed their apprehensions and recognised the pleas from the student body. Both companies pledged to actively consider joining the patent pool once the final details have been released by UNITAID itself.

Having campaigned on the vision of a patent pool for the past few years Tom (Edinburgh), Rosalind (UCL) and I (Florence, Nottingham) were honoured to be part of such promising discussions on its potential reality and to join Diarmaid in representing the Student Stop Aids campaign which now makes up 30 universities whose hard work is proving small actions by active students can contribute to big changes affecting millions of lives.

By Florence Anderson (Nottingham Stop AIDS)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 16th, 2009 at 6:04 pm and is filed under Campaign News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.