Word: generic
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Zackie Achmat and the Treatment Action Group kept up their pressure. Last October, Achmat took a highly publicized trip to Thailand, returning with a suitcase full of Biozole, a locally manufactured generic copy of Fluconazole - a drug used to treat opportunistic infections in AIDS patients - that he bought at a price 98 percent cheaper than the price charged in South Africa for the brand-name tablets. This illegal "import" was a symbolic act of defiance, designed to challenge the drug companies and stiffen the spine of his own government. "People were dying across the country and doctors were saying they...
...Even before they surrendered in their courtroom battle to stop generic imports, the pharmaceutical corporations had lost their case in the court of public opinion - in no small measure due to the efforts of Achmat and his fellow campaigners. Still, the battle isn't over. Now that the drug companies have stepped aside from the dispute over importing generics, Achmat and his colleagues will have to fight to convince the South African government to commit billions of dollars to the fight to keep almost 5 million AIDS patients alive. And for Achmat, as much as any of them, the clock...
...affected by the pandemic from importing or manufacturing cheap copies of AIDS treatments. Legal representatives of 39 international pharmaceutical manufacturers acknowledged as much Thursday, when they ran up the white flag in a Pretoria courtroom, withdrawing their suit challenging South African legislation that authorizes the government to begin importing generic AIDS-treatment drugs...
...above the fate of the more than 4 million South Africans infected with HIV. In the end, those corporations lost the will to stand between South Africa's infected community and access to the cheapest possible treatments - manufacturers in Brazil, India and Thailand, for example, are able to supply generic versions of the drugs at a fraction of the price charged by the Western pharmaceutical corporations that hold the patents...
...precedent they've established, particularly in light of the forthcoming case being brought by the U.S. against Brazil at the World Trade Organization. Brazil may be substantially wealthier than South Africa, but it, too, has millions of people living in poverty, and the supply of locally manufactured generic AIDS drugs has cut deaths from the disease by half over the past four years. The South Africa decision will raise the pressure to back off on Brazil, too, which would reinforce the principle that the intellectual property rights of drug companies can be ignored by governments responding to public health crises...