[COMMENTARY] U.S. Should Back the Kids, Not the Pharmaceutical Companies

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[:en]By Josh Greenstein

Asia Catalyst’s recent report vividly depicted the barriers Chinese kids face to getting AIDS treatment that they need to survive. One key problem is that powerful U.S. based pharmaceutical companies have made some AIDS drugs extraordinarily expensive – including both second-line drugs that are essential for those who have built up resistance to the first line of AIDS medication, and pediatric medicines. The U.S. government has, until now, backed the pharmaceutical companies in their campaign to penalize countries that dare to invoke their rights to produce these medicines without patents. It is time for the U.S. government and big pharma to get out of the way and allow developing countries to give their citizens the life-saving drugs they desperately need.

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[COMMENTARY] HIV and Human Rights in China

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[:en]Remarks by Joanne Csete at launching of Asia Catalyst’s report I Will Fight to My Last Breath: Barriers to AIDS Treatment in China on April 28, 2009.

I would like to offer these remarks in honor of our colleague Mr Hu Jia who is currently in a Chinese prison partly because he exercised his freedom of speech in the form of bold advocacy on behalf of people living with HIV in China.  I am also deeply honored to be in the presence of Mr Li Dan and Ms. Shen Tingting and to acknowledge their pioneering work on behalf of people living with HIV.

I congratulate Asia Catalyst on the hard work that went into the production of this very useful report and especially for reminding us that addressing HIV in any population means addressing a wide range of human rights and human rights abuses.

We are in a moment in the global health world when there are many powerful interests making the case that the world has focused too much on HIV, that HIV has been treated as too “special” and has received too much money and attention, and that we need to make our response to HIV more like the response to other health problems.  My reaction when I hear this is that this line of argument opens the door for those who would push us back to the time when all global health problems were horribly underfunded and neglected.  Why are we not all pushing for every health problem and for health systems challenges to attract the kind of funding that HIV/AIDS has attracted, rather than for HIV to be pushed back into the “normalcy” of other problems?

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[REPORT] The Story of Xiao Liu

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[:en]By Lauren Burke

April 18, 2009

During the summer of 2008, I traveled around China meeting with HIV-positive children to discuss the barriers they faced in accessing treatment. Xiao Liu, a thirteen-year-old patient in a Beijing hospital, was one of the last children I met. In his hospital room with green walls, Xiao Liu handed me a notebook

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[EVENT] The Morning After at Asia Catalyst

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[:en]The Morning After— Thanks to everyone who came out for Asia Catalyst’s speed-dating on Monday night. Thirty courageous men and women put on their game faces and met fellow 25 to 35-year-old progressives. Their friends joined in the after-party, and together we raised $680 for our campaign for kids with AIDS in China.

To all of you who decried the 35-year-old age limit as unfair, and those who demanded men-dating-men and women-dating-women events, we hear you, and promise we’ll have more speed-dating for progressives soon. (Just remember – if things go well, we’ll be expecting a nice big piece of wedding/commitment ceremony cake at Asia Catalyst.)

Big Pharma and AIDS in China

Speaking of speed-dating, that’s what one blogger was reminded of when listening in on U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk’s Senate confirmation hearing – which lasted just 48 minutes. Apparently, the Senate wants him to get right down to work. Let’s hope that his to-do list includes overhauling the administration’s past policy on compulsory licensing of AIDS drugs by developing countries.

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