18 November 1999

You do not have to be particularly cynical to see "Secure The Future"-- BMS laboratories' initiative for Africa, presented yesterday during a press conference in Paris, as little more than a marketing ploy. Even though BMS has been trumpeting loudly about their involvement in this program, they still however refuse to tackle the question of drug tariffs, which is today the most important question as far as AIDS is concerned.

The launching of this program in Spring 1999 took place while the talks between South Africa and the pharmaceutical industry - which benefits from the blind support of the American government - were reaching their most crucial and difficult point. South Africa, where a fifth of the population is infected with AIDS, has been subject to pressure and threats of economic retaliation for over a year. Pharmaceutical companies, which sell their drugs at prohibitive prices, try by all means to avoid the South African government including in its new legislation on medication compulsory licensing, a legal clause in the WTO agreements authorizng any country to produce locally indispensable and otherwise unaffordable medical treatments for their PWAs when an AIDS epidemic represents a health crisis.

In this context, the announcement of the Secure The Future program is above all an attempt by BMS to improve their image.

What this program offers is only a contribution among many others, along with those led by other pharmaceutical companies or government programs, international initiatives or actions by sponsors. Last spring, Bill Clinton declared a contribution of 100 millions US$ for the struggle against AIDS. During a recent Commonwealth meeting in South Africa, Tony Blair made similar promises. France, though timidly, has been involved financially in a policy of access to treatment in the developing countries. Thus, the BMS initiative is not exceptional.

As Peter Piot said during BMS last press conference, the epidemic is exploding in the developing countries: nearly 3 million people died of AIDS this year, 30 million PWAs have no access to treatment and are therefore condemned.

BMS profits are enormous: US$ 1 billion in the last trimester of 1999, over US$ 4,174 billion forecast for 1999. d4T brought US$ 302,000,000 in 1998 and ddI brought US$ 99,000,000 for the BMS companie last year. Whereas research and development for the latter treatment - it is well known - was financed by the American administration and not by the laboratory.

The pharmaceutical industry is amongst the first to benefit from the global economy, but they will not adapt to the rules it imposes, and they deny the evidence: their pricing policy kills.

The few programs of access to anti-retroviral treatments launched in Southern Africa (Ivory Coast, Senegal, Uganda, etc) prove that today the price of medication is the first obstacle to improving access to treatment.

BMS does not have a monopoly on charity but, along with other companies, it exerts a monopoly over drug patents and that is precisely what is the problem today for the 30 million PWAs who have no access to care.

Over the last 8 months, BMS has been advertising their "Secure The Future program, while refusing, a month before the opening of WTO discussions in Seattle, to consider the actual stakes involved: market segmentation, adapting the prices of drugs to the payment abilities of the developing countries.

Act-Up Paris denounces this criminal attitude.

Act Up Paris 18 November 1999

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