Word: importantly
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...zealous defense of its patent rights has emboldened foes even more. Activists plan to turn up the heat this week in Pretoria, when South Africa's high court resumes hearings on a lawsuit filed by 39 pharmaceutical companies against a 1997 law that gives the Health Minister discretion to import cheap copies of patented drugs or authorize local labs to produce them without the consent of patent holders. The Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association says the law is unconstitutional. But the industry faces clamorous opposition. Thousands of protesters have taken to South Africa's streets, and a petition signed by 160 organizations...
...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 could not afford to prescribe the right medicines," Achmat told an interviewer. "We wanted to set a moral example...
...sure, governments facing AIDS crises throughout the developing world have followed the South Africa case with interest, and will be encouraged by its outcome. Although sales to Africa, for example, count for some 1 percent of the market of AIDS-drugs manufacturers, the corporations fear that allowing the import of generic versions in those markets could lead to challenges elsewhere: Black market sales in Western markets, for example, or even direct challenges by infected communities in the industrialized world questioning why they're being asked to pay $15,000 a year for anti-retroviral treatments available elsewhere...
...dilemma for the government that won the suit. The resistance of the drug companies had given the government of President Thabo Mbeki a ready explanation for its failure to make anti-retrovirals available to South Africa's infected population. But even at the substantially lower prices made possible by importing generic versions, a mass treatment campaign would be a mammoth expense to the cash-strapped government. Simply providing the medical infrastructure to supply the drugs to some 5 million people, many of whom live in conditions of abject poverty that increase their vulnerability to all manner of infection could require...
...with the U.S. "Growth is the key question facing Latin America today," Velasco said. Analyzing the ways that developing nations could achieve more rapid growth, he said a "great bet for the next decade" was to "integrate yourself into a richer area" - precisely the path of the FTAA. "You import the institutions and procedures of that richer area, and then you grow. That works," he said, citing such cases as Portugal, Ireland and Greece in Europe, "countries that have caught up very quickly to the income of that area." The economic success of Mexico in the wake of the NAFTA...