AHF Calls CAFTA Win 'Devastating Loss' for Central Americans With HIV/AIDS
Posted on: Thursday, 28 July 2005, 03:01 CDT
WASHINGTON D.C., July 28 /PRNewswire/ -- AIDS advocates from AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), the nation's largest provider of HIV/AIDS medical care serving thousands of patients in the US, Africa, Central America and Asia, today denounced the approval of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) by the United States House of Representatives, which ratified the trade agreement in a 217 to 215 vote. HIV/AIDS advocates oppose the treaty because of its anti-generic drug provisions that require participating Central American countries -- Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras -- to strengthen patent laws to mirror US policy and will, therefore, severely limit access to affordable, life-saving anti-retroviral therapies (ARVs) for HIV/AIDS treatment in these developing nations.
"Today's vote by the House of Representatives in favor of this poorly-conceived trade agreement is a devastating loss for Central Americans living with HIV/AIDS where affordable, life-saving medications just became further out of reach," said Michael Weinstein, President of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which operates three HIV clinics in Honduras that offer free AIDS care and generic antiretroviral medications. "For patients currently on treatment in Central America, CAFTA means a fifteen-fold increase in the cost of their medications, making the House's action today not only a tragedy for Central American HIV patients but a dangerous precedent that compromises World Trade Organization principles asserting that trade accords should not interfere with public health and access to medicines. In light of today's vote, AHF calls upon the global community -- including the pharmaceutical industry, funding bodies such as UNAIDS and the WHO, as well as the UN Security Council and the WTO -- to stand up for the basic human right to health and access to medications and to declare the HIV/AIDS pandemic a global health emergency. It is the only way to ensure that profits won't continue to be protected at the expense of the public's health and that people in developing nations don't end up paying for trade agreements such as CAFTA with their lives."
AIDS Healthcare Foundation
CONTACT: Lori Yeghiayan, Communications Specialist of AIDS HealthcareFoundation, +1-323-860-5227, or cell, +1-323-377-4312
Source: PRNewswire
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