The Guardian, Tuesday 17 February 2009

The Stop Aids Campaign welcomes the engagement of GlaxoSmithKline’s chief executive, Andrew Witty, with the proposal to establish a medicines patent pool (Drug giant pledges cheap medicine for the world’s poor, 14 February). Unitaid, the international drug purchasing facility, launched by the UK government along with other concerned countries in 2006, is currently working to establish the first patent pool for HIV treatment and so this announcement comes at an opportune moment.

The Push for the Pool campaign has been our focus for the past year. There is overwhelming public support for both big pharma and the UK government to do more to increase access to life-saving drugs in poor countries. The Department for International Development recently received petitions from more than 14,000 supporters calling for the Unitaid patent pool.

A patent pool for existing medicines has the potential to expand access to affordable treatment for millions living with HIV as well as leading to the development of new child-friendly HIV treatments.

A patent pool is a simple system where patent-owners voluntarily give their patents to a central organisation that then licenses them to other companies and researchers. Companies that make cheaper, unbranded drugs and researchers that want to use the patents to develop new versions of the drugs can access the patents in the pool in exchange for paying a fair royalty to the patent owners. The pool acts as a one-stop-shop for managing the negotiations, and receiving and paying the royalties.

We encourage Witty to go further and fully endorse patent pools not only for research, but for existing, patented HIV treatments such as the Unitaid patent pool. It is encouraging to see one of the largest pharmaceutical companies recognising its obligation to help the poor access affordable medicines.
Katy Athersuch
Coordinator, Stop Aids Campaign

We congratulate and welcome the decision by GSK to engage in a process of patent pooling in order to stimulate innovation into “neglected diseases”. This sharing of knowledge for the benefit of public health by companies has been recommended by NGOs for a long time. In light of the global financial crisis, and as research and development pipelines dry up, and other routes to innovation are explored, it is a very timely business decision by GSK.

Yet this positive development in the ethical and economic imperative of promoting access to medicines is marred by developments elsewhere. EU trade commissioner Catherine Ashton, on behalf of the European commission, is currently pushing developing countries to accept stringent provisions on intellectual property (IP). This prioritises the rights of patent holders at the expense of access to medicines, jeopardising health in developing countries.

The European commission has made commitments in multilateral fora, such as the WHO and the WTO’s 2001 Doha declaration, to support health in developing countries. The behaviour of Ashton undermines these commitments and fails in Europe’s moral duty to reconsider the extremely rigid IP demands in trade agreements.

Global Update

Source: NYT
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
Published: February 16, 2009

Women in poor countries need a vaginal gel that blocks the AIDS virus but not sperm because many still want children. They also need one that can be inserted secretly: for too many women, any action that implies that a partner is infected is likely to result in a beating.

And men who have sex with men may well need a microbicide that works rectally.

Previous trials of microbicides had to be stopped when they proved ineffective or even made women more likely to become infected. New research presented in Montreal last week suggested that progress is being made, but slowly.

In a study supported by the National Institutes of Health, a new gel called Pro 2000 was tested in 3,099 women in Africa and the United States. It appeared to protect them 30 percent better than a placebo, but researchers are awaiting results of a British study on 9,000 women.

Gels containing one or two antiretroviral drugs, tenofovir and FTC, were tested in monkeys. They appeared to give 100 percent protection — but researchers cautioned that only six monkeys got each gel, that the gels had high doses of drugs, and that what works with simian virus in monkeys does not always work in humans.

Oral doses of tenofovir appeared to partly protect monkeys from rectal exposure to the virus. Many studies of prophylactic tenofovir are under way in humans.

View article at NYT

Come and check out some of the events happening at McGill during International Women’s Week!

Event schedule:

Monday, March 2: Samosa Sale

Leacock

Come out to support Women Without Borders! Also, pick up your ticket for MGAC’s Disparity Dinner.

Tuesday, March 3: Film screening

6pm; AUS Lounge

God Sleeps in Rwanda

Uncovering amazing stories of hope in the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide, Academy Award-Nominee GOD SLEEPS IN RWANDA captures the spirit of five courageous women as they rebuild their lives, redefine women’s roles in Rwandan society and bring hope to a wounded nation. (http://www.godsleepsinrwanda.com)

A question/answer & discussion period will follow, facilitated by the McGill Global Aids Coalition

Wednesday: “Women & Innovation”

4:30-6pm; Rutherford Physics Building, rm 112

Women Without Borders brings together some of McGill’s most accomplished women in science! Panelists will discuss what inspired them to enter their field, the gender-based obstacles they have faced, and what can be done to encourage more women to pursue scientific careers.

Panelists:

Suzelle Barrington, the first woman in Canada to obtain a PhD and to become a university professor in Agricultural Engineering and the first woman elected President of the Canadian Society of Agricultural Engineering.

Vicky Kaspi, the Canada Research Chair in Observational Astrophysics and the Lorne Troittier Chair in Astrophysics and Cosmology.

Si Yue Guo, the President of the Students Physics Society.

Refreshments will follow!

Thursday, March 5: Girlhood Studies Journal launch 12:00 - 1:30, location TBA

Girlhood Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal is a peer-reviewed journal providing a forum for the critical discussion of girlhood from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, and for the dissemination of current research and reflections on girls’ lives to a broad, cross-disciplinary audience of scholars, researchers, practitioners in the fields of education, social service and health care and policy makers. International and interdisciplinary in scope, it is committed to feminist, anti-discrimination, anti-oppression approaches and solicits manuscripts from a variety of disciplines.

Thursday, March 5: MGAC Disparity Dinner 7:00-9:00pm, Maison De L’Amitié, 120 Duluth ave. East

Dine at the world’s table! Ever wonder what it was like to be one of the 2.6 billion people living on less than $2 a day? This is your chance to come experience aspects of global inequalities first hand. You will either eat a simple “developing world” meal or be one of the lucky few to receive a full elaborate meal! Brought to you by the McGill Global AIDS Coalition

Tickets: –$5– available from MGAC members, in the MGAC office (room 433 in Shatner) or around campus, the week of March 2, so keep your eyes open for more info to come. All funds go towards MGAC’s advocacy and education projects next year.

***Check out International Women’s Week at McGill on Facebook for event details and updates!***

Source: MSF
February 16, 2009

Sticking points in the discussions about a Memorandum of Understanding included; questions of control over MSF’s budget and financial means; the freedom to use drugs that have proven effective in MSF projects elsewhere; and testing of sputum samples in labs.
Beijing/Brussels - After almost two years of trying to reach an agreement with China’s TB Control Program, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) has given up on its efforts to start a project in Inner-Mongolia to assist people suffering from multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB). Though MSF was originally asked by the TB Control Program to set up such a project in Chifeng prefecture, to date no agreement has been reached. MSF can no longer justify allocating resources to the opening of a project that seems unlikely to go ahead.

MSF started negotiations with the Chinese authorities in April 2007 and has since been engaged in high-level discussions on national, provincial and prefecture level.

“The negotiations have been extremely frustrating,” said Luc van Leemput, MSF’s operational coordinator in Brussels who previously was the organisation’s head of mission in China. “We know that administrative processes take time in China, but after almost two years of moving back and forth without a concrete outcome, we have to accept that we are blocked from bringing much-needed life-saving medical aid to MDR-TB patients in Inner-Mongolia. In a region with high levels of drug-resistant TB, this is very bad news for the people who continue to go untreated.”

Sticking points in the discussions about a Memorandum of Understanding included: questions of control over MSF’s budget and financial means, the freedom to use drugs that have proven effective in MSF projects elsewhere, and testing of sputum samples in labs. Twice, MSF and Chinese health officials reached verbal agreement on all points. Yet no Memorandum of Understanding has been agreed upon and signed.

“We have exhausted our possibilities,” said Van Leemput. “We have submitted, amended, resubmitted proposals. We have sent over specialists and decision-makers from our organisation’s highest level to Beijing and Chifeng: at best they have had inconclusive meetings, at worst they did not get to see anyone at all. Meanwhile, patients continue to go untreated.”

MDR-TB is a strain of tuberculosis that does not respond to conventional TB medication. Treatment is much more complex than treating drug-sensitive TB, takes longer, has much stronger side-effects for the patient, and is very expensive. The spread of MDR-TB is seen by public health experts as one of the most serious epidemiological challenges of our time.

With an estimated 140,000 MDR-TB cases, China ranks first in the occurrence of the infection, before India (87,000) and the Russian Federation (34,000). The WHO calculated that 39 percent of all cases worldwide are found in China (Anti Tuberculosis Drug Resistance in The World Report Nr 4, February 2008). In Inner-Mongolia, 6.5 percent of people who test positive for TB but have not received treatment before are diagnosed with drug-resistant TB: among those who received prior treatment, the prevalence is as high as 36%.

MSF has extensive experience in treating MDR-TB in many other countries, including South Africa, Kenya and India. In China, the organisation continues its HIV/AIDS program in Nanning in Guangxi Autonomous Region and its mental health program in Sichuan Province.

View article at MSF