Nearly a quarter of a million persons from more than 150 countries have voiced concerns over the negative impact that a legal challenge brought by the multinational pharmaceutical company Novartis against India's patent law could have on access to medicines in developing countries. The legal challenge brought by the Swiss-based Novartis against the government of India began to be heard in the Chennai High Court on Monday - despite an international petition launched by the international medical humanitarian organization Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF) last December to put pressure on the company to drop its patent case against India.
Health equity in economic and trade policies
Groups urge Novartis to drop patent case against India
Raja K: Third World Network, 30 January 2007
HIV/AIDS Civic Society Organisations and movements working on access address WHO DG
5 February 2007
This letter represents people living with HIV/AIDS and their advocates around the world who are fighting for access to affordable treatment for HIV, writing to request that the Director General of the World Health Organisation (WHO) reconsider her comments regarding the Thai government’s decision to issue a compulsory license for the production or importation of three drugs, two for treating HIV/AIDS. They state that she has been entrusted, in your position as director general of WHO, to work for “the attainment by all peoples of the highest possible level of health”, and their belief that her comments last week do not reflect this mission, and in fact work against it.
Further details: /newsletter/id/32109
Linking Migration, HIV/AIDS and Urban Food Security in Southern and Eastern Africa
Southern African Mobility Project (SAMP)
Mobility is the means by which many individuals and households seek security of income and livelihood: traders move between sources and markets, migrant workers go to mines, factories, towns and farms. Looking specifically at the experiences of women, both as street traders and domestic workers, the authors find that mobility is that is essential to securing these women's individual and household livelihoods increases their vulnerability to HIV. Research found that lack of information on HIV was one of the main factors in making them more vulnerable highlighting the need for HIV education initiatives targeted at specific migrant communities.
Prominent figures call on Novartis called to drop its case in India
Raja K: Third World Network, 17 February 2007
More prominent figures have joined the chorus of over 300,000 people worldwide voicing concerns about Novartis’ legal challenge against the Indian government and its impact on access to essential medicines across the globe. They include the former Swiss President, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Stephen Lewis former UN Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, and Dr. Michel Kazatchkine, the head of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
WHO Executive Board unable to move IP Group process
Hong E: Third World Network, 2 February 2007
Several developing-country members of the Executive Board of the World Health Organisation have expressed concern and frustration at the lack of progress and direction of a WHO group tasked with charting the organisation's future action on intellectual property, innovation and health. These concerns were voiced at the WHO's Executive Board meeting being held on 22-30 January. At the end of the discussion on the item, the frustration was even more palpable because the Board itself could not seem to make any progress on the issue.
Declaration of the Abuja Food Security Summit
African Union: Summit on Food Security in Africa, Abuja Nigeria, 4-7 December 2006
Despite a wealth of stakeholder consultations, plans, recommendations, commitments and declarations, food insecurity in Africa remains at unacceptably high levels (27%). There is general concern that the implementation of Maputo and Sirte summit decisions is not moving at the right pace to make a significant contribution to the attainment of MDGs by 2015. In line with the NEPAD philosophy of increasing reliance on Africa's own resources, the challenge facing the 2006 Abuja Food Security Summit is to accelerate reduction of food and nutrition insecurity through fostering mind-set change in mobilisation and utilisation of African resources to implement a few quick wins at national, RECs and continental levels.
Development Tanzania: Sachs Says it is possible to meet MDGs
Nieuwoudt S: Inter Press Service News Agency, 22 January 2007
World renowned economist and director of the United Nations (UN) Millennium Project, Jeffrey Sachs, is a harbinger of good news. During his visit to Nairobi in mid-January he emphasised that it was still possible to meet the MDGs before 2015. ‘‘We can still achieve the Millennium Development Goals if proper use is made of the powerful tools at our disposal. But two things are necessary: sustained partnerships between governments and civil society and sustained donor resource input’’. UN secretary general Kofi Annan commissioned the Millennium Project to develop an action plan against poverty under Sachs’ leadership.
Has globalisation passed its peak?
Abdelal R, Segal A: Foreign Affairs, January 2007
Not long ago, the expansion of free trade worldwide seemed inevitable. Over the last few years, however, economic barriers have started to rise once more. The forecast for the future looks mixed: some integration will probably continue even as a new economic nationalism takes hold. Although globalisation as a process will continue to sputter along, the idea of unrestrained globalisation will wane in force. Managing this new, muddled world will take deft handling, in Washington, Brussels, and Beijing.
Scrooge and intellectual property rights
Stiglitz JE: British Medical Journal 333: 1279-1280, 23 December 2006
At Christmas, we traditionally retell Dickens's story of Scrooge, who cared more for money than for his fellow human beings. What would we think of a Scrooge who could cure diseases that blighted thousands of people's lives but did not do so? Clearly, we would be horrified. But this has increasingly been happening in the name of economics, under the innocent sounding guise of "intellectual property rights."
The new famines: Why famines persist in an era of globalisation
Devereux S: Routledge, 2007
Contemporary famines are either deliberately created or allowed to happen. This new book collection argues for a conceptual shift in famine analysis: from understanding famines as failures of food availability or access, to understanding famines as failures of response. New concepts introduced in this collection include ‘famine intensity and magnitude scales’, ‘pre-modern, modern, and post-modern’ famines, ‘hidden famines’, and ‘priority regimes’. Case studies include famines that have occurred since the 1980s in Ethiopia, Sudan, Malawi, Madagascar, Iraq and North Korea, and a ‘near-famine’ in Bosnia.