Pharmaceutical Giants Cave in —Will it Help?

hirty-nine pharmaceutical companies trying to maintain the level of their huge profits, gave up a three-year South African court battle in April, beaten back by the negative publicity engendered by AIDS activists. They’d hoped to prevent the AIDS-stricken nation from importing less expensive medicines.

Former South African President Nelson Mandela and General Secretary

Kofi Annan of the United Nations had both called on the companies top drop their suit. The drug giants had argued to protect medical patents which they considered "intellectual property." South African law, however, allowed the government to purchase brand-name drugs at the lowest rates available, and drug company opponents maintained that the government’s stance complied with international trade agreements.

The pharmaceutical companies promised to repay the South African government’s legal fees.

There were celebrations around the court house in Pretoria. Activists and people with AIDS danced merrily, popping champagne bottles and hugging. South Africa’s health minister said:

"Obviously this is a victory for all of us. We hope our experience has contributed in some way to the larger debate on access to affordable health care for developing countries and for the poor in wealthier nations."

In spite of this legal victory, however, the high spirits of the AIDS activists were soon quelled. Now, it has become apparent, the barrier to extending the life-spans of patients will be the South African government itself.

The African National Congress party, in a manner which brings to mind George W. Bush’s budgeted downsizing of Ryan White funds in the United States, has no intention, apparently, to expand access to cheap drugs.

The same health minister, Dr. Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, who’d praised the pharmaceutical companies for withdrawing from their suit against the government told activists that the purchase of AIDS drugs, no matter how cheap, would not be a priority of the South African government.

In a nation where over four and a half million citizens are infected with the virus, her announcement came as a sad shock.

Mark Heywood, a legal expert who’d helped pressure the drug giants by organizing street protests, called the health minister’s announcement "a stab in the back." It would be necessary, he noted, to focus on the intransigence of the government in order to save millions of lives.

Although Thursday’s decision by the drug companies could be considered a victory, he said, "We’re measuring success by bringing real medicines to real people."

Heywood and others are now planning new strategies to pressure drug makers to lower their prices in a nation whose population is being decimated to a greater extent than anywhere else on earth.

Other African countries, poorer than South Africa, have moved ahead of schedule to provide anti-retrovirals at reduced costs. Pilot programs in Uganda, Senegal and the Ivory Coast are targeting the virus. Botswana, a wealthier nation, aims at distributing anti-AIDS drugs to all of those infected by the end of 2001.

In South Africa, training for rural nurses and doctors to monitor AIDS drug ingestion is a necessity. Activists are planning to pressure the government to increase financing and to apply for special permission to import cheap generic AIDS drugs.

Whether the African National Congress will respond in a time of great need, remains to be seen.

Jack Nichols is the author of The Gay Agenda: Talking Back to the Fundamentalists (Prometheus Books, 1996) Of Men’s Liberation: A New Definition of Masculinity (Penguin Books, 1975) and of Welcome to Fire Island: Visions of Cherry Grove and The Pines (St. Martin’s Press, 1976)