Treatment Action Campaign

Today, Tuesday 11 November, the Treatment Action Campaign hosted a press conference to draw attention to our recent global call for affordable access to HPV vaccines for developing countries.

TAC has issued the following global call for affordable access to HPV vaccines in non-OECD (developing) countries. Copies of the statement below will be delivered to representatives of Merck and GlaxoSmithKline, the manufactures and patent-holders of the Gardasil© and Ceravix© HPV vaccines , respectively, in the near future. We ask individuals and organisations to please add their sign-ons to this important campaign:

"This is a request to reduce the price of the vaccine to $10.00 for all non-OECD countries. It is our firm belief that in the long-run the volumes generated by global access will ensure a reasonable profit for your shareholders. But, above all, this will save countless lives of women and girls now.

We also request that your companies co-operate with the public health sector to undertake efficacy trials in men and boys with a focus on MSM.

Do you remember where you were 8 years ago? I remember it distinctly. In the summer of 2000, I was in Durban for the first -and so far only - international AIDS conference held on African soil. There are many unkind things said about these events, but those few days in South Africa changed the lives of millions of people forever. I still get shivers when I remember the challenge directed at us by Edwin Cameron, a justice of the South African Supreme Court of Appeal and an openly HIV-positive, gay man. He said: Those of us who live affluent lives, well-attended by medical care and treatment, should not ask how Germans or white South Africans could tolerate living in proximity to moral evil. We do so ourselves today, in proximity to the impending illness and death of many millions of people with AIDS.