AIDS Activists Target Pharmeutical Greed

Rochester area activists join the international fight for HIV treatment with new local efforts and collaboration with national activist network.

This weekend local AIDS/public health activists will hold organizing meetings to build the movement challenging the pharmaceutical industry's power to make enormous profits at the expense of deteriorating world public health conditions and human rights. Local efforts will be led by community activists, people living with HIV, college and medical students.

Inspired by a recent TEACH-IN led by national organizers from HealthGAP (WWW.HEALTHGAP.ORG), The Rochester Global AIDS Project and others will focus on the national '04 Stop AIDS Campaign, aiming to take advantage of the unusual access to powerful people that happens during presidential campaigns. We will use campaign events to demand accountability for US policies that are pushing developing countries into deeper public health crises -- we cannot allow Bush to get away with any more compassionate speeches about AIDS accompanied by brutal attacks on reasonable public health approaches.

The '04 Stop AIDS Campaign will pressure lawmakers along three major courses:
1. Donate the Dollars: The U.S. should donate $30 billion over the next five years and a substantial share should go to the Global Fund To Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (NOT to Bush's bilateral State Department projects loaded with right wing ideology).
2. Treat the People: U.S. trade policies must be drastically changed to reflect social needs instead of pharmaceutical greed. HealthGAP and other public health advocates are opposed to WTO, FTAA, CAFTA and all policies that protect pharmaceutical interests with disregard for millions of unneccessary deaths due to treatable illnesses each year.
3. Drop the Debt: World Bank/IMF policies cripple developing countries' abilities to promote public health in their populations. AIDS activists call for broad debt cancellation and an end to World Bank/IMF approaches.

To plan tactics for local campaign visits, join us for an organizing meeting on Friday at noon or Saturday at noon. (see the IMC Calendar)

The Rochester Global AIDS Campaign also continues its community education work by linking with local groups and individuals who have committed to helping directly in the global AIDS crisis by sending medicines, supplies, and money, and by visiting places devastated by AIDS. We will continue to organize spaces for public education in the hope that more people will donate what they can AND do what they can to change the balance of power in favor of peoples' access to essential treatment and care.