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 13th July 07, Stephen Gowans, Global Research.ca
Michael Moore’s Sicko is an entertaining and emotionally compelling film. It exposes the harshness of profit-based healthcare to the majority of Americans, and does so in the film-maker’s accustomed engaging way. There is no one as deft in connecting on issues of concern to the left and ordinary people with as large an audience as Moore. On this, he has no peer. |
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11th June 07, Kester Kenn Klomegah, Inter Press Service
Although the Group of Eight industrialised nations agreed at their summit in Heiligendamm, Germany, to allocate 60 billion dollars to fight AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis in Africa, health activists say the treatment targets are much lower than originally pledged, which is "devastating news", especially for the millions of people with HIV/AIDS.
In a joint declaration on "growth and responsibility" in Africa, the G8 -- Britain, Canada, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, Russia, and the United States -- also invited other donors to join the initiative, proposed by the United States, which pledged 30 billion dollars of the total. |
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 4th June 07 - Sarah van Gelder, Yes! magazine Why is Cuba exporting its health care miracle to the world's poor?
Cubans say they offer health care to the world’s poor because they have big hearts. But what do they get in return? They live longer than almost anyone in Latin America. Far fewer babies die. Almost everyone has been vaccinated, and such scourges of the poor as parasites, TB, malaria, even HIV/AIDS are rare or non-existent. Anyone can see a doctor, at low cost, right in the neighborhood. The Cuban health care system is producing a population that is as healthy as those of the world’s wealthiest countries at a fraction of the cost. And now Cuba has begun exporting its system to under-served communities around the world—including the United States. |
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 14th May 07, Peter Robson, Green Left Weekly
While there are treatments to slow the progression of AIDS, adding decades to sufferers’ lives, access to them is a case study in the vast gap between rich and poor nations. Few deny that HIV/AIDS is a massive health crisis. What is now clear is that it is also a social one, exacerbated by the contradictions of a world dominated by the wealthy minority of First World countries.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), the worldwide AIDS crisis shows little sign of abating. India and China are the new infection “hot spots” and there has been a recent spike in infection rates in the Asia-Pacific, particularly in Papua New Guinea. |
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 20th March 07 - Joseph Stiglitz, Project Syndicate
Innovation always requires incentives, but the patent system is an inefficient and inappropriate way to fund research in the healthcare market. Part of modern medicine's success is built on new drugs, in which pharmaceutical companies invest billions of dollars on research. The companies can recover their expenses thanks to patents, which give them a temporary monopoly and thus allow them to charge prices well above the cost of producing the drugs. We cannot expect innovation without paying for it. But are the incentives provided by the patent system appropriate, so that all this money is well spent and contributes to treatments for diseases of the greatest concern? Sadly, the answer is a resounding "no."
The fundamental problem with the patent system is simple: it is based on restricting the use of knowledge. Because there is no extra cost associated with an additional individual enjoying the benefits of any piece of knowledge, restricting knowledge is inefficient. But the patent system not only restricts the use of knowledge; by granting (temporary) monopoly power, it often makes medications unaffordable for people who don't have insurance. In developing countries, this can be a matter of life and death for people who cannot afford new brand-name drugs but might be able to afford generics. For example, generic drugs for first-line Aids defences have brought down the cost of treatment by almost 99% since 2000 alone, from $10,000 to $130. |
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 15th Jan 07 - Sherwood Ross, OpEd NewsMore Americans are dying needlessly every day in the United States because of President Bush's failure to provide universal health coverage than are being killed in the fighting in Iraq.
The U.S. has suffered 3,000 dead in Mr. Bush's charnel house (actually, add about 300 more if you count corporate soldiers-of-fortune) but their numbers beggar in comparison to the numbers of Americans dying on the home front. I refer, of course, to the fact that the vast shift of Americans' tax dollars to the military-industrial complex is starving this nation of essential public services, notably health care, and untold numbers of Americans are dying every day for the want of it, far more than the two or ten soldiers whose names turn up in the Pentagon's casualty lists from Iraq. |
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 Jaime Montejo, Elvira Madrid and Rosa Icela Madrid, 5th Jan 07 - IndyBay
Reflections on the XVI International AIDS Conference in Toronto, Canada
“A third of the world’s population does not have access to medication, according to World Health Organization official statistics. Currently, 9 out of every 10 people who die due to an infectious disease live in a poor country. These deaths could have been avoided, in many cases, if they would have had access to the necessary medication or vaccine to prevent these illnesses.”
Emilia Herranz, President of Doctors without Borders, Spain, 18 July 2005
We are currently witnessing the criminal negligence of the pharmaceutical industry, of the Bush administration and of other governments and institutions, in the limitation of access to antiretrovirals (ARV) for people who live with HIV or AIDS, particularly in Africa, a continent besieged by HIV/AIDS. Neither the pharmaceutical companies who have ARVs, nor the governments who have the money, nor the governments who could amend their laws to make inexpensive generic ARVs available, none are prepared to prolong or rescue lives, primarily African lives. These are some of the initial reflections made by Jesse McLaren, a Canadian doctor and activist, in his speech “AIDS and Imperialism; money for AIDS, not for war”, presented at the XVI International AIDS Conference in Toronto, Canada, celebrated August 14-18, 2006. |
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