[Pharm-policy] Saying no to US Exim Drugs

[Patrick Bond]

An editorial in The Citizen newspaper, Johannesburg, Monday, 24 July:

                             Right to say no
     The SA government is quite correct to
     decline the offer of a R1b-billion loan
     from the US Import Export Bank to buy drugs
     to combat HIV/Aids. Borrowing money is not
     a solution to this problem, especially when
     one of the conditions is that drugs must be
     bought from US firms. Any such anti-Aids
     programme must be sustainable in the long
     term. This means the drugs must be
     affordable and without strings attached.
     For this to happen South Africa must be
     allowed to develop its own generic
     substitutes or to import parallel products
     at low prices, without threats of
     litigation or other sanction. We hope the
     government is actively pursuing these
     options.

(The Citizen is a notoriously right-wing paper; this is quite a 
breakthrough in mainstream consciousness, if taken at face value.)
Patrick Bond (pbond@wn.apc.org)
home: 51 Somerset Road, Kensington 2094 South Africa
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work:  University of the Witwatersrand
Graduate School of Public and Development Management
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