Capitalism can’t solve AIDS crisis

G8 Protest:

Capitalism can’t solve AIDS crisis

G8 Protest logoForty
million people globally are infected with HIV.

25 million live in Africa (10% of the population) and by 2020, 90
million Africans could be infected.

Zena Awad

The UN has warned that current levels of ‘action’ could see the
disease bring the entire continent to its knees and generations of
Africans lost.

The British government has said it intends to push Aids vaccine
research up the political agenda when it assumes the presidency of the
G8 in July.

The G8 have promised to set up a Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise and
pledged more funding. There are estimates that an effective safe vaccine
could be available by the end of the decade – but available to whom?

These hypocritical leaders are boasting that global funding for HIV
has tripled in the past four years but it is now just a little over $6
billion – less than Britain has set aside for the invasion and
occupation of Iraq!

The Bush administration has committed $15 billion – compared to $173
billion spent on the war, enough to fully fund world wide AIDS
programmes for the next 17 years.

 The US is also pursuing a religious neo-conservative agenda
which gives priority to faith-based organisations promoting sexual
abstinence over condom use.

US congress woman, Barbara Lee, opposes this policy: "In an age
where five million people are newly infected each year, and women and
girls too often do not have the choice to abstain, an
abstinence-until-marriage programme is not only irresponsible, it’s
inhumane".

Bush and Co.

Bush and Co. are also pushing brand name anti-retroviral drugs which
are more expensive than their generic counterparts.

And despite the fall in the yearly price of treatment from around
£6,000 to £180, nine out of ten people who need the medicines are
still not getting these life-saving treatments. Because HIV hits the
poorest in the world – over one billion people live on less than two
dollars a day – HIV infection and its treatment are clearly a class
issue.

Under World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules, a nation can only break
drug patents if there is a national emergency but apparently the current
crisis does not count. The head of Brazil’s AIDS programme, Pedro
Chequer, exposed the role of the WTO: "It’s all a big agreement to
keep developing nations hostage to the multinational industry."

While the price for the drug itself is now lower, the cost of foreign
imported drugs in countries like India has increased massively from 50%
to 85% of the treatment programme’s cost. Local pharmaceutical firms are
driven out of business as a result of the patent law.

Brazil

Brazil, where the number of people with HIV has remained at about
600,000 for several years, has now broken the patent law and will be
making copies of up to five drugs.

HIV/AIDS and the misery and suffering of millions worldwide have
become a market for the capitalist criminals! The rampant spread of this
virus and the millions it kills world wide are a by-product of this
profit-driven system.

Susannah Price, the BBC UN correspondent, pointed the finger at those
responsible for the epidemic by emphasising how dramatic is the impact
of government policies on the spread of HIV and Aids in Africa.

A recent UN report concluded that if millions of Africans are still
being infected by 2025, "it will not be because there was no choice
– [but] because collectively there was insufficient political will to
change behaviour at all levels…"

But there is a collective will, the real collective of ordinary
people – the hundreds of thousands of demonstrators that have been
protesting against the greedy drugs companies which would rather see
millions die and whole communities devastated than their profits drop!

Let’s show them and the rest of the world how strong our collective
will is by mobilising huge numbers for the counter-G8 summit and
demonstrations. The G8 are only eight, join the hundreds of thousands
and demonstrate!

Make capitalism history – make socialism our future!