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    • Pharmaceuticals

    Eyeballing the Pharmaceuticals: Focusing on second line treatments

    Student Stop AIDS has just launched our latest campaign. This term, we’ll be shifting our strategy - and our watchful eyes - in a new direction. As health care providers like Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) struggle to get new and second-line treatments to those who need them, we’ll be asking two pharmaceutical manufacturers - Abbott Laboratories and Gilead Sciences - why it takes so long to get certain medicines where they need to go.

    The issues

    In recent years AIDS activism has pushed down the price of what’s called first line treatment, from to as little as $120 per year in some countries. But as the virus naturally develops resistance to these drugs there is an urgent need for newer medicines, or second line drugs. Unfortunately, affordable versions of these drugs are practically non-existent.

    This campaign focuses on two crucial second line drugs - New Formulation Kaletra and Tenofovir. While both have important benefits for people in developing countries - fewer side effects, can be stored outside a fridge, can be taken on an empty stomach, involve taking smaller number of pills per day - the companies who own them have done little to get them to those who need them.

    Abbott Pharmaceuticals, which owns the rights to New Kaletra, have not even begun the lengthy process of registering the drug in Africa, while US patients have been accessing it since last October. Gilead Sciences, the company who makes Tenofovir, claims to be making the drug available at cost price throughout Africa, but the WHO say Tenofovir is only available in six countries.

    This term we�ll eyeball both companies to demand that they take urgent action to get these drugs to everyone who needs them.

    Global solidarity

    Access to treatment is a global issue and as campaigners we need to apply pressure at many different points. We’re running this campaign in solidarity with the Student Global AIDS Campaign, our counterpart in the US. Organisations like Médecins Sans Frontières are also on the case.

    The actions

    We know exams will limit how much people can do this term. But if you can only spare one day, make it Friday 28 April, Student Stop AIDS� National Day of Action. As a final push before exams, students around the UK will get as many people as they can to send letters to Abbott and Gilead.

    What next?

    We hope Abbott and Gilead will respond with urgency to our demands. If they don�t, we�ll have to adapt our strategy and find other ways of bringing them round to our way of thinking. Watch this website and our newsletter for updates.

    From the field

    Student Stop AIDS’ Fionnuala Murphy recently met with Tobias Luppe from MSF’s Access to Medicines Campaign. Read the interview here.

    Get involved

    We’ve produced a handy briefing which explains things in more depth and includes posters, press releases and other resources to help you take action.
    Download the 2007/8 Campaign Briefing

    Find out more: