this post was submitted on 30 May 2024
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
The US company Gilead Sciences has been urged to “shape history” by avoiding a repeat of the “horror and shame” of the early years of the Aids pandemic, when 12 million lives were lost in poorer parts of the world after effective drugs became available, because the medicines were not affordable.
In a letter, campaigners said the drug “could be a real gamechanger worldwide for the people most excluded from high-quality healthcare” and “help end Aids as a public health threat by 2030 – but only if all who would benefit from it can access it”.
Three hundred signatories – including the actors Gillian Anderson, Stephen Fry, Sharon Stone and Alan Cumming; former heads of state; Françoise Barré-Sinoussi, the Nobel-winning scientist who helped discover HIV; and people living with the virus – have signed the letter.
This could be achieved by licensing generic versions through the Unitaid-backed Medicines Patent Pool, which the company has done in the past for treatments for HIV/Aids and Hepatitis C, although only for low, rather than middle-income countries.
“The world now recalls with horror and shame that it took 10 years and 12 million lives lost before generic versions of ARVs became available worldwide and thus HIV treatment on a large scale became possible for people in the south.
“By sharing the technology with the whole of the global south, you will help save lives, prevent HIV infections, and advance the end of the world’s deadliest pandemic.
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