Why Is This Peruvian Woman With HIV Speaking Out Against an International Trade Agreement?

[nationalize the fed]

Advocates Say the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Could Prevent Access to Life-Saving Medications for Millions

TheBody.com | Barbara Jungwirth | September 28, 2015

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a proposed trade agreement among the United States and 11 other nations around the Pacific Ocean: Japan, Australia, Peru, Malaysia, Vietnam, New Zealand, Chile, Singapore, Canada, Mexico and Brunei Darussalam. Negotiations of this agreement have been conducted in secret, but some of the proposed text has been leaked, including the chapter on intellectual property rights and patent protections.



Rachel, a woman living with HIV in Peru, states in the video below: "Because of competition and generic medications, the price of my treatment has dropped from US$10,000 to US$150 per year." The video says that the TPP patent protection provision would mean "more monopolies, less competition, fewer generic medications, that is: higher prices." One of the participants in the video calls such price increases "a luxury' she cannot afford.

The current proposal for the intellectual property chapter prohibits signatory countries from approving generic or biosimilar medications for eight years after a brand-name drug has been approved. Advocates say such a delay would deny people living with cancer, HIV and other serious medical conditions access to affordable life-saving medications. This, in turn, could affect the lives -- indeed, the very survival -- of millions of people in the developing world, according to Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières, MSF). Judit Rius Sanjuan, MSF's U.S. manager explains:

"Pharmaceutical companies already enjoy some of the highest profit margins and longest monopoly protections of any industry, and granting them extended and additional market exclusivity is just another way to delay price-lowering competition and keep medicines out of reach of MSF medical operations and millions of people."

A multinational campaign against the provision is collecting signatures on a petition to be delivered to the next (and possibly final) TPP meeting to be held September 30-October 2 in Atlanta, GA. The petition is available online. The campaign has also assembled statements from people living in countries that would be affected by this chapter of the agreement...snip
http://www.thebody.com/content/76476/oppose-the-patent-protection-provision-in-the-tpp-.html

#TPPkills - Peruvian Patients Speak Out
Published on Sep 23, 2015
Nuestra salud NO es negociable with English subtitles

Sep 30: Activists at Atlanta TPP Trade Negotiations

Published on Sep 30, 2015

Trade Activists
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPQX2EGr33pwD_i3c2pdRcw