Contacts:
ACT UP NEW YORK: Eric Sawyer: 212 864 5672, 917 951 5758;
ACT UP PHILADELPHIA: Kate Kraus 215 731-1844;
Medecins Sans Frontieres: (Nobel Peace Prize) 212 655 3764

(March 21, 2000: NEW YORK CITY, NY) Eight Activists from ACT UP NY walk into CEO William Steere Jr.šs Office at Pfizer Worldwide Headquarters and demand a meeting.  Activists were demanding that Pfizer drop the price of Diflucan, their Patented anti-fungal drug which Pfizers prices out of the reach or the poor, condemning hundreds of thousands of poor people with AIDS to blindness and painful deaths.

Pfizer prices this drug in South Africa at $17 dollars per day, while the average South African earns $7 per day.  Pfizer earned 1.2 billion dollars last year alone from this drug, which they acquired by buying the patent >from a British Chemical Company (Kenneth Richardson of Empirical Chemicals Industries, Plc. UK. filed the original and second patents on this drug; Filed: June 1, 1982, Approved: September 13, 1983.  )

"Pfizer is holding a drug that can save the lives of people with cryptococcal meningitis over the heads of sick dying poor people with AIDS while they shake  them down to empty their pockets of their lifešs savings, or go blind and die," said Eric Sawyer of ACT UP NY, to James Brigaitis, Diflucanšs Worldwide Team Leader who meet with the activists more than one hour after several security guards escorted the activists off the CEOšs floor.

"I donšt think your investors would like that you condemn poor people who make $5 dollars a day in Kenya, to death by charging $20 a day for this drug in Kenya. Especially when it is produced generically in India and Thailand for 60cents a day, "said Mel Stevens of the Health GAP Coalition.

Activists were angry that Pfizer refused to return calls or letters to Steerešs office and to Brigaitis, requesting a meeting and marched into the offices demanding a meeting.

Activists in the US are supporting the calls of activists in Africa, including the Treatment Action Campaign which has demanded through Pfizeršs South African Division that Pfizer drop itšs price for Diflucan to the generic price or stop fighting requests for importing the generic version of the drug from other countries.

As advocates for People Living With HIV and AIDS, it is unacceptable to ACT UP that patients are still dying today because of curable diseases. We cannot passively stand by as patients in poor countries die because they do not have access to medicines that can save their lives.  We can not stand by as Pfizeršs greed kills people because they are poor and can not afford drugs that are cheap to make, because Pfizer choose to charge a fortune for the drugs.

We know, Medecins Sans Frontieres and its national colleagues in the public and private sector, continue to diagnose more cases of cryptococcal meningitis, but are incapable, in most cases, of treating these patients afflicted with this fatal illness because of the high price you charge for the drug. In Bangkok, a patient afflicted with cryptococcal meningitis benefits from being treated with fluconazole at a reasonable price, which is not the case, either in Kenya, or in South Africa. In practical terms, this signifies that the selling price is 15 to 17 times higher in Kenya and South Africa than in Thailand, where the medicine is not patent protected.  Pfizer charges two or more times the average daily wage for a medicine that can save some onešs life.

ACT UP states that the populations in poor countries should be able to pay less for essential medicines. It is the populations of rich countries that should assume most of the costs of research and development for these treatments. If the patent system can be an important motor to encourage research and development of new medicines, a balance has to be found to allow access of populations of poor countries to medicines able to help save lives.

In the poor countries where Pfizer holds the marketing rights to fluconazole ACT UP demands that Pfizer: