[corp-focus] Killing Africa With Kindness

[Robert Weissman]

Killing Africa with Kindness
By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman

With the announcement of a billion-dollar-a-year U.S. government loan
program for African countries to buy AIDS drugs, the fight to deliver
affordable drugs to people with HIV/AIDS in Africa and elsewhere in the
developing world has entered its third phase. 

If the drug companies' current kill-them-with-kindness scheme fails, many
of the more than 20 million people with HIV/AIDS in Africa may finally
receive access to the treatments that could save their lives. 

In phase one of the dispute (Deny, Deny, Deny), the world's leading drug
companies, through their pricing policies, simply refused treatment to
people with HIV/AIDS in Africa. With per capita incomes in many developing
countries at less than a dollar a day, people with HIV/AIDS were simply
unable to pay the $12,000 a year or so required for the AIDS drugs
cocktails that enable many or most people with HIV/AIDS in the United
States to survive. If any developing country made noises about finding
ways to provide the drugs more cheaply, the U.S. government -- operating
at the behest of the big drug makers -- threatened trade sanctions and
forced them to back down. 

In phase two (Who Me?), the U.S. government resigned from its bullying
role. AIDS activists forced the Clinton administration to reformulate its
policy, culminating in an announcement that the U.S. government would not
challenge African countries' efforts to make generic AIDS drugs available
to their people, so long as the countries complied with World Trade
Organization rules. 

Now, in phase three, the industry and the Clinton administration are
conspiring to kill Africans with kindness. 

Through the United Nations, the industry has offered to provide discounted
AIDS drugs to Africa -- but at prices that remain wildly inflated over the
cost of production, and far too high to be affordable by most Africans.
Although no one seems to know exactly what those rates will be, many
published reports suggest discounts will be in the 80 percent range. Such
price levels almost surely will enable the pharmaceutical companies to
continue to profiteer from drug sales. 

Then, last month -- in a move immediately denounced by a wide range of
organizations working on drug access and debt issues, including Doctors
Without Borders, Oxfam and the Health GAP coalition -- the U.S.
Export-Import Bank, a government agency, announced it would loan a billion
dollars annually to African countries for the purchase of HIV/AIDS drugs. 

The high-interest Ex-Im loans would pile new debt obligations on African
nations at a time when existing debt burdens are undermining the
countries' ability to prevent and treat HIV/AIDS, and when the AIDS
epidemic is itself already undermining their economic capacity to make
interest payments on foreign loans. 

The African countries' pain will be the drug manufacturers' gain. The
Ex-Im loans are be used to buy drugs made by U.S. companies, apparently at
the highly profitable "discount" level provided to the UN. 

Organizations like Doctors Without Borders believe that efficient
procurement of generic drugs could drop the cost of HIV/AIDS medicines an
additional 90 percent from the estimated drug industry "discounts." That
would put the cost of combination HIV/AIDS drug therapies at approximately
$200 per person per year. 

The most insidious aspect of the Ex-Im proposal is how it will work to
preempt efforts by African and other developing nations to lower costs
through purchases of generic versions of AIDS drugs 

As the New York Times reported, "It seems unlikely that Brazil, India or
other nations that produce such drugs for home consumption would have the
export financing available to help African nations buy the goods. The
American loans, along with a recent commitment by the World Bank to
provide at least $500 million to help African nations set up anti-AIDS
initiatives, give added incentive to African nations to treat many of
their AIDS cases with Western medicine." ("Western" medicine means
expensive, brand-name drugs, as opposed to lower-cost generics.) 

But the momentum for African countries to buy generic versions of the
drugs, or to acquire the technology to make their own generics, may be too
great for the industry's killer-kindness ploy to succeed. 

Already, South Africa and Namibia have reportedly indicated their refusal
to accept the Ex-Im loans, a welcome sign that African nations may be
ready to take serious measures -- irrespective of the drug industry's or
the U.S. government's desires -- to provide treatment to the horrifyingly
large population with HIV/AIDS.  


Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime
Reporter. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based
Multinational Monitor and co-director of Essential Action, a corporate
accountability group that is part of the Health GAP coalition. Mokhiber
and Weissman are co-authors of Corporate Predators: The Hunt for
MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage
Press, 1999, http://www.corporatepredators.org)

(c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman