Access to Medicines

MSF's Judit Rius explains how the United States is standing in the way of an international treaty to fund research into neglected diseases.

While drug companies celebrate price reductions that will allow girls in poor countries to be vaccinated against cervical cancer for $14 per patient, these prices are still out of reach for millions of people, MSF's Kate Elder explains.

New vaccines, including for cervical cancer, are still priced too high to reach many girls in the world's poorest countries, according to MSF's Kate Elder.

As negotiations for the TPP restart tomorrow, countries must prioritize fixing critical flaws in the agreement that could leave millions of people with limited access to affordable generic medicines. Take action: tell members of congress to protect access to lifesaving medicines.

MSF's Kate Elder explains how the high price of vaccines prevents many children from being immunized.

MSF calls on GAVI and pharmaceutical companies to extend discounts so more children can be reached.

A landmark ruling by India's Supreme Court underscores the need for patients to have access to generic medications at affordable prices, according to MSF's Jennifer Cohn.

MSF's Jennifer Cohn explains how a ruling by India's Supreme Court protects access to medicines for many patients in the developing world.

This important decision safeguards access to affordable medicines and prevents abusive patenting of drugs.

Two new drugs effective against multidrug-resistant tuberculosis must be introduced to improve treatment regimens in countries with a high burden of the devastating disease.

U.S. proposals in the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade talks will make lifesaving medicines unaffordable for many people who need them, MSF warns.

At the 20th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections MSF will present data on strategies to reduce the costs and complexity of rolling out routine viral load monitoring in developing countries.

Unless damaging provisions are removed before negotiations are finalized, the TPP agreement is on track to become the most harmful trade pact ever for access to medicines in developing countries.

As talks for the TPP Agreement resume this week, MSF calls on the U.S. government to end its stall tactics and revise its proposals for what otherwise promises to be the most harmful trade deal ever for access to medicines in developing countries.

Governments meeting at the World Health Organization’s Executive Board this week must seize the opportunity to improve serious shortcomings in the document that will drive the global community’s vaccines response for the next decade

India's Supreme Court is expected to rule on a case with major implications for the global supply of generic medications. MSF's Leena Menghaney and Petros Isaakidis warn about the potential consequences for patients.

An important new TB treatment approved by the US Food and Drug Administration must be made available in countries with high levels of the drug-resistant form of the disease.

The approval by the US Food and Drug Administration of an important new tuberculosis treatment must lead to its availability in countries with high levels of the drug-resistant form of the deadly disease.

The Food and Drug Administration has granted accelerated approval for bedaquiline, the first tuberculosis drug to be developed in 40 years. Bedaquiline is "a potential game changer" in treating drug-resistant tuberculosis, according to Dr. Manica Balasegaram, executive director of MSF's Access Campaign.

MSF's Kate Elder explains how the for-profit model of drug and vaccine development fails to meet the needs of millions of the world's poorest and most vulnerable people. 

Experts comment on a report by MSF and the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDi) which highlights the relative lack of medical research for diseases affecting millions of people in poverty.

Negotiating with vaccine manufacturers leads to lengthy, unnecessary delays during medical emergencies, says MSF.

MSF is deeply concerned that the current global vaccination strategy is not paying enough attention to reaching babies that continue to go without the very basic vaccination package.

Over the last few years, new vaccines to fight an increased range of childhood diseases have come to market.

Vaccinating with new vaccines should save many more lives, but high prices could prevent this from happening.

Immunization is one of the most effective ways of saving young lives, yet every year one in five children born—22 million—is left without this basic protection from disease.

Results from the largest multi-country implementation of a new rapid TB diagnostic test reveal a growing global crisis of drug-resistant TB.

MSF combats efforts to stifle access to lifesaving drugs.

Research presented by Epicentre, MSF's epidemiological research arm, and other African researchers adds to evidence that the two existing rotavirus vaccines may not be best adapted for use in Africa.

Access to medicines is a crucial issue in private talks over the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the largest trade deal in U.S. history.

MSF launched the Patent Opposition Database as part of the campaign to boost access to medicines in countries where patients can't afford the high drug prices some companies seek to preserve.  

In this blog post from BMJ Group Blogs, lawyer and India manager of MSF's Access Campaign Leena Menghaney discusses the two legal battles that are taking center stage in the struggle over India's medicines patent law.

Novartis heads to the Indian Supreme Court today in a final bid to undermine a key public health safeguard in Indian patent law designed to prevent drug companies from abusive patenting practices. 

German pharmaceutical company Bayer is challenging an intellectual property decision in India that allowed more affordable generic drugs to be produced in the interests of public health.

Novartis AG goes to India's Supreme Court on Wednesday to seek patent protection for its blockbuster cancer drug Glivec in a case that could deliver far-reaching ramifications for multinational pharmaceutical companies operating in India....

Novartis's critics, including Médecins Sans Frontières [Doctors Without Borders], say that if the company prevails, it could set a legal precedent that allows pharmaceutical giants to patent a range of drugs in India that are now available from generic producers, including HIV medicines. That would demolish a thriving low-cost industry and lead to higher prices, not just in India, they say, but elsewhere in the developing world where India is a major exporter of drugs.

An open letter to Joe Jiminez and Daniel Vassella, the CEO and President of Novartis, respectively. 

Encompassing eleven countries and slated for further expansion across the Asia Pacific region, the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) is a regional trade agreement that will set the standard for 21st-century trade agreements going forward.

The Obama administration has alarmed global health experts by opposing a new international fund that would fight disease in the developing world.

The US and European Union delegations to the World Health Assembly are blocking efforts to move towards a binding convention on health R&D aimed at filling critical medical gaps for people in developing countries.

MSF urges health ministers at the World Health Assembly to pass a resolution to jumpstart R&D for unmet medical needs.

A new, ten-year, multi-billion dollar action plan for global vaccination may fail to deliver if it does not directly address the weaknesses in routine immunization programs. 

MSF helped organize a fashion show for women living with HIV to show what is possible when treatment is made available and to alert the public to the tragic lack of access to treatment in the country.

Despite recent advances, there's still a need to make noise about "the silent disease."

On July 10, 2012, India's Supreme Court will hear the challenge to the country's patent law by Novartis, a case with enormous ramifications for the production of low-cost generic medications.

A landmark patent ruling in India could possibly set a precedent that allows patients in developing countries far greater access to essential medicines.

MSF's appeal to Novartis to drop its case against India continues as the pharmaceutical company's day in court draws near.

Read MSF's submission to the US trade representative on the 2012 Special 301 review process, which affects accessibility of medicines and important diagnostic tools.

Read Novartis's statements on its generic medicines court case, and learn why they're wrong.

Learn more about why Novartis is taking India to court over the production of affordable generic medicines.

Novartis is taking India to court to stop production of affordable generic medicines that millions of people depend on to stay alive.

A new free trade agreement between the EU and India could severely impact access to affordable medicine in developing countries.

Learn how a free trade agreement between the European Union and India could restrict access to affordable medicines for millions of people with HIV/AIDS and other diseases and conditions.

The Syrian regime is persecuting people wounded in demonstrations and the medical workers trying to treat them.

MSF has released a list of important stories that had an impact on people’s ability to access needed drugs, diagnostics, and vaccines in developing countries in 2011.

Through its Access Campaign, MSF has been closely following the developments in the world of access to medicines, vaccines, and diagnostics.

On Monday, December 19, Johnson & Johnson is expected to announce whether it intends to license its patents on three lifesaving HIV/AIDS drugs to the Medicines Patent Pool, a mechanism designed to lower prices of HIV medicines and increase access to them for people in the developing world.

MSF responds to Gilead Sciences's announcement that it will be donating drugs for the treatment of 50,000 patients suffering from visceral leishmaniasis.

MSF study shows cryptococcal meningitis as leading cause of death, but access to best treatment is a major challenge

As Africa’s AIDS Conference convenes in Addis Ababa, the promise of new scientific evidence showing treatment helps prevent transmission is mitigated by grave concerns about global funding of HIV programs.

Response to President Obama’s December 1 speech on World AIDS Day, from MSF's Dr. Tido von Schoen-Angerer

MSF International President Dr. Unni Karunakara discusses the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria's decision not to accept grant applications this year to support treatment programs due to a catastrophic drop in donor funding. 

MSF responds to the unprecedented decision taken to cancel a funding round of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria.

Without appropriate funding, the opportunity to reap the benefits of new science showing that HIV treatment both saves lives and helps prevent new infections could be lost.

Health facilities in the Gaza Strip are facing a serious shortage of drugs and medical supplies.

Despite the ostensible cessation of the fighting that wracked Ivory Coast earlier this year, violence against civilians has continued in some rural regions, particularly in the southwest. In mid-September, for instance, up to 16 people were killed and 50 homes were burned in an attack on the town of Zriglo.

In early June, world leaders and global health officials gathered at the United Nations for a summit meeting on HIV/AIDS. Among the outcomes was a new treatment target, a plan to get 15 million people living with HIV/AIDS on antiretroviral (ARV) treatment by the year 2015.

The financial transaction tax due to be discussed at this week's G20 Summit could help save millions of lives if a portion of it were put toward global health.

This report shows how the lives of five MSF patients were transformed because they had access to medical interventions that could save millions of lives if they were more broadly available. It is for just this reason that MSF supports allocating a portion of any financial transaction tax passed into law to support global health needs.

The financial transaction tax proposed by France and Germany could help save millions of lives if a percentage were allocated to global health, MSF said today.

Dr. Grania Brigden, the advisor on tuberculosis with MSF’s Access Campaign, describes how children with TB that could be treated often go without care because of a lack of effective diagnostic tools and approaches. 

Every day, Senzo wakes up and walks to catch a bus to the clinic for his daily injection. The injection is part of the complicated two-year-long treatment for his drug-resistant form of TB.

Busiwe Beko who lives in Khayelitsha, South Africa, describes her baby daughter’s successful battle with drug-resistant TB.

Thousands of people with Chagas disease will go untreated in coming months due to a shortage of benznidazole, the first-line drug used in most endemic countries.

This crisis could have been prevented but the major player involved, the Brazilian Ministry of Health, has shirked its responsibilities and is evidently unwilling to overcome the various challenges. 

After spotting irregularities in one medication being used in Kenya, MSF is correcting the supply problem and taking all measures to ensure adequate treatment and follow-up care for patients.

As United States trade representatives thrash out an international trade deal in Chicago, truly ominous developments are unfolding behind the scenes.

As the Measles Initiative meets in Washington, D.C., MSF is calling for an effective outbreak response mechanism to be established immediately to deal with the rising numbers of severe outbreaks worldwide. 

Access to affordable lifesaving medicines will be threatened where they are needed most if the U.S. implements restrictive intellectual property policies in the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement.

Novartis is lobbying India's Supreme Court to undo a key safeguard in Indian patent law, which would have a devastating impact on access to affordable medicines across the developing world.

This is the 14th edition of Untangling the Web of Antiretroviral Price Reductions (UTW), released at the International AIDS Society (IAS) Conference 2011 in Rome.

Several pharmaceutical companies have abandoned HIV drug discount programs in middle-income countries, according to an HIV drug price report released by MSF.

Pharmaceutical company Gilead's move to license several HIV/AIDS drugs to the Medicines Patent Pool could improve access but excludes several countries with many people living with HIV.

NEW DELHI/BRUSSELS, June 22, 2011–At the United Nations High Level Meeting on HIV and AIDS in early June, India announced that it will not accept data exclusivity, a provision harmful to access to affordable medicines, as part of a free trade agreement (FTA) currently being negotiated with the European Union (EU).

The participants of the UN Summit on AIDS took a critical step by committing to reach 15 million people with HIV treatment by 2015, but they must take concrete action to truly make this happen.

Now that research has shown that HIV treatment can reduce transmission by 96 percent, governments meeting at the UN Summit on AIDS must agree to put nine million people on treatment over the next four years.

Founded in 2003, the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi) brings together the academic, medical, public health, and pharmaceutical worlds to create effective drugs to treat neglected diseases like Chagas disease, sleeping sickness, and visceral leishmaniasis.

While several countries hardest hit by HIV/AIDS are improving treatment protocols to reduce deaths and illness, a lack of donor support still prevents many from implementing vital changes.

Johnson & Johnson, which holds patents on three key new HIV drugs desperately needed throughout the developing world, has so far refused to license these patents to the Medicines Patent Pool.

I am writing on behalf of MSF to express our disappointment that J&J has not yet placed any patent into the Medicines Patent Pool and that it has announced in a recent letter to the Medicines Patent Pool that it is not ready to engage in formal negotiations.

A drug proven to reduce deaths in children suffering from severe malaria must be immediately rolled out in African countries.

Severe malaria has traditionally been treated with quinine. Today, the latest scientific evidence clearly shows that many more children’s lives can be saved by switching treatment from quinine to a more effective drug, artesunate.

A promising new test will finally help detect more people with drug-resistant tuberculosis, a development that lends greater urgency to solve major problems surrounding the pricing and supply of DR-TB medicines

Dr Andrei Slavuckij, who has been following the evolution of TB in the former Soviet Union for the past dozen years, discusses the dynamics of the disease in a post-Soviet landscape.

In July 2002, Fred Minandi, one of MSF's first patients in Malawi to receive antiretroviral drugs, spoke about his daily life at the 14th international conference on HIV/AIDS, held in Barcelona.

New WHO directives on the treatment of HIV/AIDS bring new opportunities and new challenges, says MSF's former Head of Mission in Malawi.

The licenses a Johnson & Johnson-owned pharmaceutical company, Tibotec, granted to three generic drug makers will keep a promising new AIDS medicine from many patients across the developing world, MSF says.

India should resist pressure from the EU to accept a free trade agreement that will have an exceedingly negative impact on access to affordable medicines

January 7, 2011, New Delhi—The Indian Patent Office has just rejected patent applications related to two AIDS medicines – lopinavir/ritonavir and atazanavir - on the basis that they did not merit patents under India’s patents law.  The decisions mark a major victory for public health, and keep the door open for the production of more affordable generics that health providers such as Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) rely on to treat patients across the developing world. 

In a US diplomatic cable made public by Wikileaks, a Pfizer official wrongfully claims MSF was involved in the company's unethical drug trial in Nigeria in 1996, a falsehood Pfizer should correct.

Through its Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines, MSF has been closely following the developments in the world of access to medicines, vaccines and diagnostics.

MSF joins other advocates for people living with HIV/AIDS to demand the EU stop pursuing measures that undermine India’s role as producer of affordable life-saving generic medicines

Several low-income countries highly affected by HIV risk being entirely or partly disqualified from the current funding round by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

The Meningitis Vaccine Project was launched in 2001 with the main goal of creating an affordable vaccine that would respond to a specific meningitis strain that plagues Africa each year.

"With the extended protection offered by this vaccine, we can hopefully prevent the epidemics from taking place at all."

But just as important gains are beginning to show their promise for patients, a stagnation in donor funding, coupled with trade policies that will create serious additional barriers to accessing affordable generic medicines, are dealing HIV/AIDS treatment a double blow.

In late 2009, the World Health Organization (WHO) issued new international recommendations concerning the fight against HIV/AIDS. WHO advocates treating more patients by starting antiretroviral therapy at an earlier stage and using higher quality drugs. These measures will result in an increase in the number of infected people eligible for treatment. While beneficial, the new recommendations pose many challenges and come amid an unfavorable global environment.  

Brussels, November 8, 2010–As negotiations on a European Union (EU)-India free trade agreement (FTA) resume in Brussels today, the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is calling on Europe’s highest trade official to halt actions that will dramatically restrict access to affordable generic medicines produced in India. 

The crucial role India plays in supplying the developing world with affordable quality medicines is being threatened.

In 2005, India put in place a patent law—fortunately it’s a law that supports public health objectives, so the result has been that India's generic manufacturers have had some space to continue producing affordable and effective medicines.

Millions of people in developing countries rely on affordable generic medicines produced in countries including India to stay alive. But the European Commission is pushing aggressive policies that will severely restrict people’s access to these lifesaving medicines.

As the European Commission (EC) resumes negotiations today on a trade agreement with India that could block access to lifesaving generic medicines, MSF launches a global campaign to stop Europe’s multiple attempts to restrict access to these medicines for patients across the developing world.

Major donor countries have chosen to undercut the main international funding mechanism to save the lives of millions of people at risk of dying from AIDS, TB, and malaria, said the international medical humanitarian organization Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) today.

Geneva/New York – September 30, 2010 – The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced today it will license a patent for an HIV medicine to the Medicines Patent Pool, a mechanism designed to boost access to more affordable AIDS drugs in the developing world. The move acts as a wake-up call to pharmaceutical companies to put patents on key AIDS medicines into the pool, said the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).

MSF Teleconference on Innovative Financing Mechanisms for Global Health, conducted September 20, 2010

Brussels, September 6, 2010—As finance ministers from the European Union gather in Brussels for a formal meeting to discuss the establishment of an EU-wide financial transaction tax, MSF calls on them to dedicate a proportion of the receipts from any fundraising mechanism to global health.

As the 18th International AIDS Conference (IAC) winds down here in Vienna, the word in the hallways is that the science is in: earlier initiation of treatment and improved antiretroviral (ARV) drug regimens are better for individual patients and communities, and may even ultimately reduce transmission of HIV.

Emi MacLean, U.S. Director of the Access to Essential Medicines Campaign at MSF, Mit Philips, health and policy analyst at MSF, Dr. Eric Goemaere, medical coordinator for MSF in South Africa and Jimmy Gideyi, a person living with HIV in Nairobi, Kenya, take part in a teleconference on the international community’s retreat from funding HIV/AIDS treatment worldwide.

MSF and Oxfam warn that vaccination programs for the developing world are facing an acute funding crisis.

MSF and Oxfam warn that vaccination programs for the developing world are facing an acute funding crisis.

Valganciclovir is primarily used as treatment and prevention of an infection caused by cytomegalovirus (CMV) in organ transplant patients, a highly lucrative market that Roche has sought to protect by patenting the medicine. But CMV also affects people living with HIV, and if left untreated, can cause blindness and death.

NEW YORK, NY, April 30, 2010 — The U.S. government’s decision to place India, Thailand, Brazil, and other countries on its annual trade "Watch Lists" is a tactic that threatens access to affordable generic drugs for patients in the developing world, the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said today.

April 26, 2010, Brussels/New York – As the European Commission (EC) and India meet for closed-door negotiations on a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) this week, the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) warns this is the last chance to remove provisions that will block access to life-saving medicines for people living in the developing world.

Not a week seems to go by without the West -- governments, pharmaceutical giants and the business press -- crying foul over India's handling of intellectual property. As a doctor, speaking from a medical humanitarian perspective, the case for a defense of India is clear: competition between multiple manufacturers allows for lower prices and greater access to lifesaving medicines.

An interview with Brazillian activist Fatima Mello, who worked with South American civil society groups to bring down the proposed Free Trade Agreement of the Americas

Closed-door negotiations between India and the EU are entering a crucial phase; at stake is access to affordable medicines for millions.

Port-au-Prince / New York, 30 March 2010 – With the majority of the Haitian population still extremely vulnerable, donors attending the United Nations conference in New York on March 31, must not take measures that would limit the populations’ access to health care, said MSF on Tuesday.

NY Times Lettter-to-the-Editor on MSF concerns that a provision in proposed U.S. health care legislation will allow pharmaceutical companies to extend monopolies on high-priced, cutting-edge medicines.

Geneva/New Delhi, March 12, 2010 – As the final round of closed-door negotiations for a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between India and the European Union (EU) is about to start this month, people living with HIV/AIDS are protesting to ensure Indian negotiators do not give in to pressure to accept terms that will seriously hamper access to medicines for millions of people living in the developing world.

London, March 9, 2010 – AIDS leaders gathering in London today face the daunting challenge of implementing new WHO recommendations for earlier treatment with better AIDS drug cocktails at a time when donors are backing away from the promise of “universal access."

Paris/New York, February 12, 2010—Both the European Medicines Agency (EMEA) and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration have recently approved the long-awaited heat-stable 100mg tablet version of ritonavir, the antiretroviral booster drug produced by Abbott Laboratories.

In a welcome move for access to medicines, the Delhi High Court has rejected the appeal filed by the German pharmaceutical company Bayer Corporation against an earlier court order which had rejected the implementation of a drug regulatory system which essentially linked registration of medicines to their patent status.

Doctors Without Borders is urging law makers to revise a provision in the U.S. health care legislation that would essentially allow pharmaceutical companies to extend their monopolies on a rapidly expanding and high-priced brand of drugs known as biologics. Biologics--medicines derived from living cells--hold great promise for new vaccines and medicines. Unfortunately, the biologics provision in the current legislation will create a massive barrier to developing generic versions of these cutting-edge drugs.

Geneva, December 15, 2009 – In a decisive step to improve access to medicines in the developing world, the Executive Board of UNITAID, the international health financing agency, has given the green light for a patent pool for AIDS medicines to open for business.

No doubt strides have been made in giving more people access to anti-retroviral drugs. But will the progress continue? Jim Clancy put that question to Emi Maclean, Director of the Doctors Without Borders Access Campaign.

Eric Goemaere hopes the patent pool will work out so he doesn't have to watch his patients in Khayelitsha die. In the U.S. HIV patients have a 69-year life expectancy. But his patients in Khayelitsha are running out of options after only 8 years on therapy. "I don't accept the principle of double standards," he says. "If it's possible to get 69 years of life in the U.S., it should be possible to get something comparable in South Africa."

The Board of Directors of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria recently voted to authorize a new call for proposals in 2010, the success of which will ultimately depend on whether donors commit to fully funding the Global Fund. Without adequate funding, the progress and pace of scale-up of lifesaving HIV/AIDS treatment, particularly antiretroviral therapy (ART), supported by the Global Fund will be threatened.

The increase in availability of antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) used to treat HIV in recent years, backed by solid funding commitments, has given millions of people in poor countries a new lease on life. This is the case for tens of thousands of people living with HIV/AIDS in Malawi’s southern Thyolo district. Here, Olesi Ellemani Pasulani, clinical officer for Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) at the Thyolo District Hospital, shares his perspective on how improved access to care has changed the lives of people living with HIV/AIDS and the healthcare workers who treat them.

The increase in availability of antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) used to treat HIV in recent years, backed by solid funding commitments, has given millions of people in poor countries a new lease on life. This is the case for tens of thousands of people living with HIV/AIDS in Malawi’s southern Thyolo district. Here, Olesi Ellemani Pasulani, clinical officer for Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) at the Thyolo District Hospital, shares his perspective on how improved access to care has changed the lives of people living with HIV/AIDS and the healthcare workers who treat them.

Johannesburg/New York, November 5, 2009 — A retreat from international funding commitments for AIDS threatens to undermine the dramatic gains made in reducing AIDS-related illness and death in recent years, according to a new report released today by the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).

A week since the campaign was launched, well over 7,000 e-mails have been sent to the drug companies by supporters from Japan to Mexico, Myanmar to Burkina Faso.

New York/London, September 30, 2009 – The international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) today called on nine of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies to help accelerate the availability of new treatments for millions of people living with HIV/AIDS, by pooling their patents on a list of key HIV medicines.

In the developing world, HIV/AIDS is an increasingly threatening emergency. Shortages of appropriate drugs and diagnostics are now joined by new challenges. Funds for programs have dried up, even though much-needed newer drugs are priced beyond the reach of most people.

When drug companies put their patents into a patent pool, they still get their royalties, while other companies use the patents to make cheaper drugs. Everyone wins.

With a dire need for newer medications, a shortfall in funding and no increases on the horizon, the AIDS emergency in the developing world is far from over. Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) spoke out at the International AIDS Society Conference held in July in Cape Town, South Africa, to push for urgent action.

An HIV vaccine trial in Thailand involving 16,000 volunteers showed potentially promising results as transmission of the virus was cut by a third. Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) welcomes the initiative as it opens up a new chapter in HIV vaccine research.

Carol Calero is a field physician for Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). Currently she is working in the nutritional emergency in southwestern Central African Republic (CAR). In this interview, she talks about being in the heart of a health emergency and of the positive cases that keeps her spirits up.

Indian authorities have rejected patent requests from United States pharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences for two life-saving HIV/AIDS drugs, Tenofovir and Darunavir, as they were considered to be in infringement of the patent law.

Marielle Bemelmans, MSF head of mission in Malawi, explains how universal access to HIV drugs works in Malawi and why the high prices of new HIV/AIDS drugs puts this great achievement in peril.

Cape Town, July 20, 2009 – Stagnation in HIV/AIDS funding and the high cost of new medicines are putting the lives of thousands of poor patients at risk, the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) warned today at the 2009 International AIDS Society conference in South Africa . Patients needing new drug regimens will return to AIDS “death row.” While the lack of access to antiretroviral treatment for seven million people remains unaddressed, inadequate financing now further threatens treatment scale-up.

Cape Town, July 17, 2009 - Recent disruptions in the supply of anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs and other essential medical items in at least six African countries are putting HIV patients’ lives at risk, said the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) today, in advance of the International AIDS Society Conference in Cape Town, South Africa.

Millions of people are infected with Chagas disease yet they do not know. They can die in silence, without asking for help, without knowing why. It's time to act: diagnose and treat now!

Barcelona/Geneva, New York, May, 19, 2009 – The World Health Organization (WHO) has cut short its annual health ministers meeting because of influenza A (H1N1) preparations and has postponed discussions about Chagas disease. Much needed progress in diagnosing and treating people for this neglected disease must not be further delayed, warned the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) today.

Geneva/New York, May 15, 2009 – A new treatment option for sleeping sickness, a fatal disease that threatens 60 million people across sub-Saharan Africa, has been added to the Essential Medicines List (EML) of the World Health Organization (WHO). The inclusion of NECT (Nifurtimox-Eflornithine Combination Therapy) is based on an application submitted by the non-profit Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi), supported by the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), and Epicentre, MSF’s epidemiological research center.

While uncertainty still prevails over the severity of a possible influenza pandemic, many developing countries do not have stockpiles of medicines or advanced purchase commitments with manufacturers to ensure they can protect their populations if the pandemic does take hold.

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) presents further evidence that adequate food supplements are needed as early intervention to avert widespread malnutrition in young children.

UNITAID and the Clinton Foundation’s HIV/AIDS Initiative (CHAI) have just announced price reductions negotiated with generic companies for 41 adult and pediatric antiretroviral formulations to treat HIV/AIDS. This is welcome news which must be interpreted with caution, says international medical humanitarian organization, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).

Geneva/New York – April 8, 2009 – A global malaria drug subsidy to be launched this month is failing to look at medical needs and is jeopardizing the future of the most effective malaria treatments that exist today, says international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).

On World TB Day this year, MSF focusses on the urgent need for TB tests to deliver faster and accurate results, for all patients, even in the remotest settings. Patients from Kenya, India and Georgia tell their stories of how TB tests today are failing them.

On March 17-18, 2009, MSF brought together a number of doctors, lab workers, community activists and test developers to answer this question. MSF Access Campaign Director Dr. Tido von Schoen-Angerer talks us through what is needed in a new TB test and explains why we can’t settle for anything less.

An 8-year-old girl is examined by medical staff in an MSF isolation center in Western Kasai Province, central Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). She was brought there by her father who suspected she was a victim of an Ebola hemorrhagic fever outbreak in the area.

Southern Sudan is a region synonymous with war, famine and displacement of people. Its people have been shattered by more than 20 years of conflict. Four years after the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) which ended the war between the government in Khartoum and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, southern Sudan’s population still faces ongoing violence, disease outbreaks, starvation, and virtually non-existent access to health care in many areas. These people’s struggles and triumphs are never clearer than in the stories of their women.

More than 23,440 children have been treated, and 88 percent cured since MSF launched a nutrition program in Burkina Faso in September 2007. The majority of patients were treated with nutrient-rich, therapeutic ready-to-use food (RUF).

Geneva/New York, February 23, 2009 — MSF and the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi) called today for more sustainable funding for research and development (R&D) to tackle deadly, yet neglected diseases, such as sleeping sickness, visceral leishmaniasis, and Chagas disease, that affect millions of people around the world.

MSF welcomes recognition by UK drugs company GlaxoSmithKline that patents act as a barrier to research and development and that patent pools offer new ways to stimulate research into neglected diseases. Promises now need to be turned into action.

Hospitals receive help from volunteer organizations like Doctors Without Borders that provide medical staff.

New Orleans, Paris, Geneva; December 9, 2008 – Positive results from a pivotal, multi-center, multi-country Phase III trial investigating an improved treatment for the advanced stage of sleeping sickness were presented yesterday at the 57th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine & Hygiene held in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. This trial shows conclusively that NECT is a safe, effective, and practical treatment.

Geneva, December 4, 2008—International medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) welcomes the ruling by the Madras High Court instructing India's patent office to hear the opponents to the patent application for valganciclovir by the pharmaceutical company Roche.

New York, New York, December 1, 2008—A partial dose of a commonly used vaccine against meningitis may be as effective as a full dose, according to newly published research in PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases. Fractional dosing would enable large-scale vaccination campaigns during epidemics, especially at a time of global vaccine shortages.

MSF Featured in “Battle in Seattle” Film

The film “Battle in Seattle”, which opened in theaters in September, dramatizes MSF’s advocacy effort at the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) 1999 ministerial meeting in Seattle. While recounting the protests at the WTO meeting, it also describes the actions of Dr. Bernard Pécoul, then director of MSF’s Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines, who urged the WTO to prioritize public health when regulating trade of essential medicines for diseases such as HIV/AIDS, malaria, and sleeping sickness. The cast includes Charlize Theron, Woody Harrelson, and Ray Liotta. More information is at battleinseattlemovie.com.

In 2008 Doctors Without Borders Medical Teams Responded to an Unprecedented Number of Crises

This past year has been an extraordinary year for emergency response, and our medical teams plan to continue to respond where the humanitarian needs are greatest in 2009 and beyond. Natural disasters, food crises, and the long-term needs of our patients with HIV/AIDS and other diseases are not going to go away overnight, and we need your support more than ever to continue to deliver live-saving emergency care.

MSF recognizes these are extraordinary economic times. As a strong supporter of MSF’s work, please renew your giving so that we can enter 2009 knowing that the organization can continue our lifesaving work, responding immediately and effectively where people need us the most.

Strengthen Your Commitment

MSF would like to thank all of our donors who have pledged to our Multiyear Initiative. With their annual commitments of $5,000 or more, these generous supporters provide MSF with predictable and sustainable funds, enabling us to respond effectively and rapidly to emergencies around the world and helping us to better plan for the future. To date, we have received pledges totaling $18,716,625 towards the initiative. To find out how you can pledge a gift over a three- to five year period of time, please contact Mary Sexton, director of major gifts, at (212) 655-3781.

A patent-sharing scheme that helped the United States build planes during World War I now could help drug manufacturers create new, urgently needed medicines.

Every day the medical teams of Médecins Sans Frontières come up against the obstacle of inadequate or ineffective tools needed to treat, detect or prevent disease – especially those diseases that predominantly occur in poor countries, such as tuberculosis, malaria or other neglected infectious diseases.

September 29, 2008, Geneva — A World Health Organization meeting to develop new recommendations for the treatment of malnutrition will have a far-reaching impact on the quality of food aid and nutrition programs for infants and young children, according to the medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).

In September 2008, Doctors Without Borders/ Médecins Sans Frontières and Columbia University's Institute of Human Nutrition will convene a meeting of lead national and international organizations and experts to review recent successes and examine how international nutrition and food aid programming can more effectively address the crisis of malnutrition in high burden regions. At a time of rising food prices and food insecurity, the need to scale up efforts to prevent the deaths, illness and disability caused by malnutrition every year is even more urgent.

Rio de Janeiro/New York, September 2, 2008 – The Brazilian Patent Office has rejected a patent application by Gilead on the drug tenofovir disoproxil fumarate (TDF), in a move that could increase access to a key HIV/AIDS medicine across the developing world, says international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).

Mexico City, August 5, 2008 —Treating children and adolescents living with HIV effectively in resource-limited settings is possible, but adapted medicines, diagnostic tools, and treatment strategies are urgently needed to prevent more deaths, according to Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).

Karen Day, Pharmacist Coordinator for MSF’s Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines, provides an overview of some of the key issues in the 11th edition report ‘Untangling the Web of Antiretroviral Price Reductions.’

Ellen ‘t Hoen, Policy Advocacy Director of MSF’s Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines, outlines how the a patent pool would work and what benefits it could bring.

by Susan Shepherd, MD
Nutrition Advisor
Access Campaign for Essential Medicines

Geneva, July 9, 2008 -  “UNITAID has shown great vision and understanding of what needs to be done - this could potentially have a big impact, both for access to medicines and for medical innovation," said Ellen ‘t Hoen, Director of Policy at MSF’s Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines.

Rome/New York, June 2, 2008 – As heads-of-state and nearly 20 key United Nations officials meet in Rome this week to design a plan to tackle the current global food crisis, the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is urging the adoption and rapid scale-up of specific nutritional strategies that target children under two years of age.

Before the High Level task force communicates its first Comprehensive Framework for Action, Médecins Sans Frontières urges careful consideration of the population that is most vulnerable to the dire consequences of malnutrition – children under two.

A UN health research and development (R&D) summit concluding in Geneva today has failed to take concrete action towards reforming a medical innovation system that largely disregards the health needs of millions of people in developing countries.

April 28, 2008, Geneva – This week, more than 150 countries at a United Nations health research and development (R&D) summit in Geneva have a chance to put right a great wrong. At the heart of the problem is a broken system of medical R&D that largely disregards the health needs of millions of people in developing countries.

Johannesburg, November 6, 2007 — Drug developers can speed up the development of urgently needed new tuberculosis drugs by adopting a different strategy, the medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) joins international experts in stating today. According to a report published today in the open-source medical journal PLoS Medicine, mimicking the approach used to test AIDS drugs would accelerate the research process, and get drugs to patients who most need them, faster.

Geneva, November 5, 2007 — Health talks opening today at the United Nations in Geneva have the potential to change the way medical research is conducted and ensure that urgently needed products are developed and made accessible, the international medical humanitarian organisation Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and Knowledge Ecology International said today.

The public sector has a key role in drug R&D. Patenting minor changes to extend monopoly prices spells misuse
By Dr. Brian Druker

New Delhi/Geneva, August 6, 2007 – The landmark decision by the High Court in Chennai to uphold India's Patents Act in the face of the challenge by Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis is a major victory for patients' access to affordable medicines in developing countries, the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) stated today.

Sydney, July 23, 2007 — A new report by the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) shows dramatic price reductions for second-line antiretroviral treatment over the last year, largely stimulated by a compulsory license issued by Thailand. But the report also identifies a worrying trend: using the newer, less-toxic first-line combination now recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) raises the cost for patients by nearly 500 percent, from US $99 to up to US $487. The report, 'Untangling the Web of Price Reductions,' was released today by MSF at the 4th International AIDS Society Conference in Sydney.

Every minute, a child under the age of 15 is infected with HIV. AIDS kills over 1,000 children every day, and claims roughly half a million young lives every year.

Johannesburg, South Africa, May 24, 2007 — The dire lack of health care workers in southern Africa is threatening efforts to expand access to HIV/AIDS treatment, warned the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in a new report issued today. The report covers four southern African countries–Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique and South Africa–where more than one million people still need life-saving antiretroviral treatment but do not have access to it. Lack of action will result in unnecessary illness and death.

By Dr. Tido von Schoen-Angerer
Executive director
Access to Essential Medicines Campaign
Doctors Without Borders

Dr. Buddhima Lokuge
U.S. manager, Access to Essential Medicines Campaign

Press teleconference on Thailand's compulsory licensing of an HIV/AIDS treatment, Abbott's response, and the coming crisis in availablity of second-line HIV drugs in developing countries.

New York, April 24, 2007 – In the last weeks, tens of thousands of displaced Somalis have fled Mogadishu following a resurgence of violence affecting the capital city of Somalia, already home to many displaced people. This recent spell of violence has put on roads entire columns of people attempting to move to safer areas of the country such as Lower Shabelle region, Hiiraan region, Galguduud region, and Bay region.

By David Wilson
Medical Coordinator, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontieres

Bangkok/New York/Geneva, 15 March 2007 — The international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) today denounced Abbott Laboratories' decision not to market its new medicines in Thailand. The Chicago-based multinational pharmaceutical company has cited Thailand's use of compulsory licenses as a reason for taking the drastic measures. MSF notes that the use of compulsory licenses to improve access to essential medicines is consistent with international laws, and is concerned that patients will bear the brunt of Abbott's harsh decision.

By Christophe Fournier, MD, International President
Ellen 't Hoen, LLM, Director of Policy and Advocacy, Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines
Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF)

By Dr. Richard Rockefeller
Chairman, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Board of Advisors

New York/Geneva, March 5, 2007 — On the day of the last hearing in Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis legal challenge against India's Patents Act, the company continues to ignore the global protests asking it to drop the case. The international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) strongly condemns Novartis for pushing forward with the case and is asking the company's shareholders to urge CEO Vasella to withdraw the legal challenge in India, which could jeopardize worldwide access to essential medicines.

By Dr. Jean-Hervé Bradol
President, Médecins Sans Frontières

New Delhi/Geneva, 29 January 2007 – As pharmaceutical company Novartis proceeded with its legal challenge against the Indian government in a court hearing in Chennai, India, today, nearly a quarter of a million people from over 150 countries expressed their concern about the negative impact the company's actions could have on access to medicines in developing countries. The Indian Network for People with HIV/AIDS (INP+), the People's Health Movement, the Centre for Trade and Development (Centad), together with the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), called on the company again today to immediately cease its legal action in India.

On Friday, January 26, 2007, MSF held a press teleconference titled "People Before Patents," to brief members of the media on a legal challenge to India's patent law brought by the Swiss-based pharmaceutical company Novartis.

New York, January 12, 2007— Proposals to accelerate the development of tuberculosis (TB) drugs were outlined today at the conclusion of a two-day symposium titled "No Time to Wait," convened in New York this week by the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontires (MSF) with the support of Howard P. Milstein and Weill Cornell Medical College's Abby and Howard P. Milstein Program in Chemical Biology. The symposium brought together more than 100 TB specialists, drug developers and regulators, policy makers, donors and activists to outline practical proposals to fill the gaps in TB drug research and development (R&D).

MSF expresses concern over the US intervention in the decision by the government of Thailand to issue a compulsory license on patents for the AIDS drug efavirenz, and explains why the US government should refrain from such actions.

New Delhi/Geneva, December 20, 2006 — A legal challenge by Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis against India's patent law could restrict access to affordable medicines in the developing world, the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said today. The organization is urging Novartis to immediately drop the case.

New Delhi/Geneva, December 20, 2006 — A legal challenge by Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis against India's patent law could restrict access to affordable medicines in the developing world, the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said today. The organization is urging Novartis to immediately drop the case.

Bangkok/New York, November 29, 2006 — Thailand today for the first time announced it will issue a compulsory license for use by the government to improve access to a key HIV/AIDS medicine, efavirenz. The international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) welcomes this important move and urges the government to issue such licenses for the production of other essential medicines.

Geneva, November 14, 2006 - Drug prices are on the rise five years after the historic signing of the Doha Declaration on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) and Public Health at the 2001 World Trade Organization (WTO) Ministerial meeting in Doha, Qatar, said the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontierès (MSF) today. Getting drug prices to decrease will require countries to make more extensive use of the TRIPS flexibilities enshrined in the Doha Declaration, which sought to "...protect public health and (...) promote access to medicines for all."

Guatemala/Geneva, November 3, 2006 - On the occasion of the board meeting of the Global Fund to Fight against AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, in Guatemala City, the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is calling for increased efforts from the government of Guatemala and the Global Fund to maintain treatment of patients living with HIV/AIDS and to expand coverage to those not currently under treatment in Guatemala, where an estimated 60 percent of people living with HIV/AIDS requiring treatment do not receive it, according to UNAIDS.

New Delhi/Geneva, September 26, 2006 — A challenge against India's patent law filed by the Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis will be heard in the Chennai High Court in India today. The international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) warns that the case may have serious implications for future access to essential drugs worldwide.

Canada was the first G8 country to amend its national laws to implement the World Trade Organization’s August 30th decision, allowing generic versions of patented drugs to be manufactured and exported under compulsory license.

In the past 5 years, considerable progress has been made in scaling-up access to antiretroviral therapy.  Today, 1.3 million people are receiving treatment.  But a huge amount remains to be done.

Bangkok/New York, July 6, 2006 – People living with HIV/AIDS in developing countries in urgent need of an improved version of the AIDS drug lopinavir/ritonavir continue to be denied access to it by its sole manufacturer, Abbott Laboratories, according to the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).

This is the ninth edition of Untangling the web of price reductions: a pricing guide for the purchase of ARVs for developing countries. The report was first published by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in October 2001 in response to the lack of transparent and reliable information about prices of pharmaceutical products on the international market – a factor which significantly hampers access to essential medicines in developing countries.

By Rowan Gillies and Ellen 'T hoen

New Delhi, May 10, 2006 – The medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is today expressing its support for Indian civil society groups in their battle against a patent application by Gilead Sciences for the key AIDS drug tenofovir (tenofovir disoproxil fumarate, TDF). People living with HIV/AIDS in India opposed the patent application yesterday on the grounds that the drug consists of a previously known compound, and should not be considered an invention according to India's Patent Act.

With tuberculosis (TB) killing 1.7 million people and newly infecting nine million each year, this curable disease is far from being curbed. The HIV/AIDS pandemic exacerbates TB's scourge through co-infection, as does the increasing emergence of drug-resistant TB. The standard TB treatment available today is long and complex. It relies on drugs developed over forty years ago and takes six months for patients to complete, and the last four decades have brought nothing in the way of improvement.

Human African Trypanosomiasis, also known as African Sleeping Sickness, is a fatal and much neglected disease that continues to plague parts of Africa. The drug most commonly used to treat the disease is so toxic that it kills one in 20 patients. While a better drug exists, it is too complex to use in resource-poor settings. In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), sleeping sickness has made a disturbing comeback over the past few decades.

Caring for children with HIV/AIDS is charged with obstacles. The struggle begins with doctors not being able to tell whether antibodies found in a small baby's blood are from the mother or whether they suggest the child itself is infected with the virus. Frustrated with the situation, MSF has been cooperating with scientists working on a new technology.

The HIV/AIDS pandemic has vividly brought to the world's attention the fact that an increasing percentage of the world's population lives without access to essential medicines. The access crisis is twofold — on the one hand, crucially needed diagnostics, drugs, and vaccines that safely and efficiently respond to diseases affecting the world's poorest do not exist; and on the other, patients living in poverty cannot afford their own treatment, as those medicines that do exist are priced beyond their reach.

The current medical research and development (R&D) system, which relies on patents to stimulate innovation, does not foster the necessary research to address the needs of billions of people in developing countries. This is because the R&D system provides greater rewards for developing drugs that sell well, rather than drugs that meet unaddressed health needs.

New York, April 27, 2006 – Abbott Laboratories is failing to make an important new AIDS drug formulation available to people in developing countries, according to the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). MSF urges the Chicago-based drug company to take immediate steps to make the heat-stable tablet version of lopinavir/ritonavir, marketed as Kaletra, available outside of the United States. MSF also calls on Abbott to fill an order for the medicine for 400 MSF patients in nine countries that the organization placed over one month ago on March 15, 2006.

Dear Mr. White,

We are writing to you to express our concern about the lack of availability in developing countries of the new melt extrusion (Meltrex) formulation of lopinavir/ritonavir (LPV/r), marketed as Kaletra (200/50mg tablets).

New Delhi/Geneva, March 30, 2006 — Today, the Indian Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS (INP+), the Manipur Network of Positive People (MNP+), and the Lawyers' Collective HIV/AIDS Unit officially submitted their opposition to a patent application filed in the Kolkata patent office by Glaxo Group Limited for Combivir, a fixed-dose combination of two AIDS drugs (zidovudine/lamivudine, or AZT/3TC). The opposition is based on technical and health grounds. If India grants a patent on this AIDS drug, it will set a precedent that will hamper access to affordable AIDS medicines worldwide.

Geneva, March 28, 2006 — As the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNAIDS release a long-awaited report on their 3x5 AIDS treatment initiative, and call for universal access to AIDS drugs, the medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is expressing concern that not enough is being done to make sure that the drugs needed to expand and sustain treatment are accessible to those who need them.

Transcript of a press teleconference on the lack of availability of Abbott's new heat-stable Kaletra in African countries.

Lagos/Berlin/New York, March 15, 2006 — People living with HIV/AIDS in developing countries can't get new and/or improved drugs that can make a critical difference, said the medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). MSF also said that it refuses to accept the standard practice of drug companies to market less adapted drugs to African, Asian and Latin American countries while reserving improved or newly developed drugs for countries that can pay more. For this reason MSF is placing an order directly with the worldwide headquarters of Abbott Laboratories in Chicago for a new heat stable version of the drug called lopinavir/ritonavir, which the company right now only sells in the US at a price of US$9,687 (average wholesale price) per patient per year.

Denver, CO, February 7, 2006 — As AIDS experts gather this week in Denver to discuss advances in treatment at the 13th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI), Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is concerned that innovations from years ago are still not reaching people in developing countries. More than three years after Gilead Sciences first announced its "Access Program" for tenofovir, this key antiretroviral medicine remains largely unavailable in developing countries.

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is alarmed at the lack of availability of a key antiretroviral to treat HIV/AIDS, Gilead Science's tenofovir disoproxil fumarate (TDF), marketed as Viread^®.

Bangkok, January 11, 2006 — As talks take place in Chiang Mai, Thailand, this week on the intellectual property provisions of a proposed US-Thailand Free Trade Agreement, the international medical organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) warns that acceptance of the US proposal could restrict access to essential medicines in Thailand and endanger the country's national HIV/AIDS treatment program.

Abuja, Nigeria, December 8, 2005 - Newer AIDS drugs and formulations of existing drugs are urgently needed in Africa but are not available because brand name companies are choosing not to sell them and there are no generic versions, according to the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).

Abuja, Nigeria, December 6, 2005 - Having to pay for HIV/AIDS care increases the risk of treatment failure, according to new research from Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) presented this week at the International Conference on AIDS and Sexually transmitted infections in Africa (ICASA), in Abuja, Nigeria.

Geneva, Tuesday December 6, 2005 — Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) today expressed alarm at the decision of the World Trade Organization (WTO) to amend the TRIPS Agreement based on a mechanism that has failed to prove it can increase access to medicines.

Nairobi/New York, November 28, 2005 — One of the reasons that half of all children with HIV/AIDS die before the age of two is that pharmaceutical companies are not making child-friendly versions of their anti-AIDS drugs. Today, Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) calls on companies to make easy-to-use versions for children of all their AIDS medicines to help prolong and improve the lives of more children with HIV/AIDS. There is also a desperate need for simple and affordable AIDS tests for babies in resource-poor settings.

The very costly and complex treatment for multidrug-resistant tuberculosis is only accessible to a very small minority among the millions of people affected by the disease worldwide.

London/New York, June 8th, 2005 - Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), other non-governmental organizations, scientists and a number of Nobel laureates around the world today joined the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative¹ in a global appeal to focus research on developing new drugs, diagnostic tests and vaccines for diseases of the poor. The signatories demand political leadership in defining research priorities, ensuring sustained financial support and reducing patent and regulatory barriers to step up vital research and development (R&D) activities.

Geneva, May 17, 2005 – Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said today that lack of commitment from the leadership of the World Health Organization (WHO) is crippling the effort to improve access to affordable versions of needed drugs.

March 23, 2005 - The Indian Parliament has passed a new law to become compliant with the World Trade Organization (WTO)'s Agreement on Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights. Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is deeply concerned that the new law will result in people in the developing world being cut off from the vital source of affordable generic versions of essential medicines produced in India.

Delhi, India, 22 March 2005 – Under a new Bill approved today, India will start granting product patents for medicines - something they have not done since 1970 - without the necessary procedures in place to safeguard against increases in medicine prices. India amended its 1970 Patent Act in order to be compliant with the requirements of the World Trade Organization (WTO).

Geneva, 15 March 2005 - As the Indian Parliament prepares to tackle the country's implementation of the World Trade Organization's (WTO) agreement regulating patents on medicines, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is urging Indian decision makers to ensure that patients in developing countries will continue to have access to affordable medicines.

Geneva/New York, 11 March 2005 - Following the recent passage in Guatemala of Decree 31-88 and the US-Dominican Republic-Central American Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA), the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) reiterated its concerns about their devastating impact on access to essential medicines in Guatemala and throughout the region.

MSF and Bernard Hirschel respond to Carol Adelman's Wall Street Journal Opinion Piece

Durban/Brussels, 13 December 2004: Starting from Tuesday, 14 December 2004, an alliance of renowned experts, institutions and non-governmental organizations will launch the ‘Free by 5’ declaration and present it to the World Bank, aid donors, the World Health Organization (WHO), UNAIDS and many other parties. While the WHO aims to have three million HIV-positive people on Anti-Retroviral (ARV) treatment in the course of next year, the declaration points out that ARVs and associated care need to be provided free of charge to all patients in developing countries.

A response from Roger Teck, MD, Doctors Without Borders physcian in Thyolo, Malawi to a San Francisco Chronicle op-ed article.

Geneva/Guatemala City, November 26, 2004 - The Guatemalan Congress's repeal of a law that severely restricts people's access to affordable essential medicines is a positive step forward. The international humanitarian medical aid organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said today that the government of Guatemala should now take advantage of this decision to ensure treatment for greater numbers of Guatemalans living with HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases. But MSF also warned that this step forward could be undermined and reversed by similar provisions included in the recently signed United States-Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA).

Geneva/Mexico City, November 16, 2004 - The current system for health research and development is failing to bring the benefits of medical progress to the poor, according to the medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) on the opening day of the Ministerial Summit on Health Research, "Bridging the Know-Do Divide to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals," in Mexico City.

On intellectual property rights and access to medicines.

New York/Lima May 14, 2004 - Intellectual property proposals being negotiated in a free trade agreement between the United States, Peru, and other Andean countries could severely restrict access to essential medicines for millions of people in Peru and other parts of the Andean region according to the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). MSF warns that the negotiations being launched next week are part of a US strategy to span the globe with bilateral and regional free trade agreements that undermine international consensus reached at the World Trade Organization (WTO) about the appropriate balance between the protection of private intellectual property and the protection of public health. These agreements will make it impossible for dozens of countries to uphold their right and obligation to ensure access to affordable medicines for their populations.

New York/Bujumbura,  May 6, 2004 - One million people in Burundi are excluded from even the most basic healthcare and two-thirds of the population have to resort to extreme measures like forced labor or selling their meager belongings for treatment, according to a new report from Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). This situation is not linked to Burundi's ongoing war, but rather is a direct consequence of a new healthcare financing system.

Geneva, April 22, 2004 - Widespread use of a new fast-acting and potent treatment for malaria is finally on the horizon in Africa, where malaria is the number one killer of children. But the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) warns that artemisinin-based combination therapy or ACT will only be accessible to all in need if immediate action is taken to finance scale-up of production of the drugs.

Geneva, April 22, 2004 - Widespread use of a new fast-acting and potent treatment for malaria is finally on the horizon in Africa, where malaria is the number one killer of children. But the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) warns that artemisinin-based combination therapy or ACT will only be accessible to all in need if immediate action is taken to finance scale-up of production of the drugs.

More than sixteen months after the multinational pharmaceutical company Merck & Co. announced that it would reduce the price of its first-line AIDS drug Stocrin (efavirenz, EFV) to less than $1 per day in developing countries, the offer has failed to materialize.

Bangkok, Thailand, February 13, 2004 - The recent court victory of two Thai people living with HIV/AIDS against a multinational pharmaceutical company is described in an article published in today's Lancet medical journal.

As 34 Latin American and Caribbean countries gather in Puebla, Mexico, to resume negotiations of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), the international humanitarian medical organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières(MSF) continues to call on countries to make public health a priority.

On CAFTA and access to medicines

Transcript of Teleconference Hosted by MSF's Kevin Phelan

Birgit Stümpfl, a German midwife, runs the MSF Chamanculo clinic for Prevention of Mother-To-Child Transmission (PMTCT).

by Patrice Trouiller, Piero Olliaro, Els Torreele, James Orbinski, Richard Laing, and Nathan Ford

On the upcoming meeting of the G8, TRIPS and accees to medicines.

On the occasion of the second Board of Directors meeting of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (Global Fund), scheduled to take place in New York City, April 23-24, 2002.

Regarding trade agreements, intellectual property rights and access to medicines.

Transcript of press teleconference hosted by MSF

On the G8, TRIPS and the need to provide funds for treatment of HIV/AIDS and neglected diseases in developing countries.

From Thailand to South Africa, MSF field projects still struggle to overcome cost barriers associated with antiretroviral medicines and treatments for common HIV-related opportunistic infections.

Bearing witness to injustice and abuse has been a fundamental component of the mission of MSF's since the organization's founding in 1971. But how do we decide when and how to raise our voices?