Six thousand out of the eight thousand people dying of AIDS daily are dying in Africa. There are over 10 million AIDS orphans in Africa alone. Nevertheless, less than 2 percent of AIDS sufferers in sub-Saharan Africa have access to the life-saving drugs they need. The World Bank estimated that in Sub-Saharan Africa there were 290.9 million people living on less than $1 per day in 1998.

Needless to say, this figure has skyrocketed since then. Even so, the pharmaceutical corporations that hold the patents on desperately needed AIDS anti-retroviral drugs still expect exorbitant profits for their life-saving drugs in this same devastated market and will go to almost any length to protect their “territory.” Despite 2.4 million AIDS deaths in Africa in the year 2000 alone, researchers say less than 10,000 people have access to the anti-retroviral medicines that have transformed the AIDS epidemic from a death sentence to a chronic illness in countries such as the U.S. which had less than 10,000 AIDS deaths in the same year. However, this stark contrast does not only point to a lack of AIDS prevention. This tragic death-toll differential of over 2.39 million deaths is directly linked to the lack of African purchasing power.

As tragic as all this is, debt-ridden African countries with an average external debt amounting to 108 percent of the average gross national product have little resources for health care and other social service safety nets.

Pharmaceutical trade liberalization fostered by the World Trade Organization’s trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights has structurally constrained Africa’s means of self-preservation through limiting accessibility to affordable medicines. Trade related aspects of intellectual property rights grants 20-year patent protection to pharmaceutical giants and thereby gives these corporations monopoly power to set their prices in a relatively noncompetitive market and, in effect, monopolize the fate of millions of AIDS sufferers.

Although TRIPS (trade related aspects of intellectual property rights) is said to contain real “public health safeguards,” the actual incorporation of these “safeguards” has proven elusive to African countries due to coercion by the World Trade Organization. These so-called “safeguards” were designed to permit countries to override TRIPS in public health emergencies through provisions for compulsory licensing and parallel importing of generics. Even though these “safeguards” do exist in written form, their actual incorporation has proven elusive due to WTO coercion of African governments via threats of international trade sanctions. Is pharmaceutical patent protection and unrestrained profit maximization more valuable than millions of African lives? Is it ethical? For more information on access to affordable medicines in the Third World and ways to donate to this important cause go to http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org.

Paul Goodman

Senior

Sociology