Calling for an "AIDS free generation" but trading away our lives

Some of the loudest and most passionate demonstrations at the XIX International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2012) condemned the United States and European Union trade agreement negotiations which aim to protect the profits of pharmaceutical companies and let people in low and middle income countries die for their sake. During her address to the conference, Hillary Clinton, US Secretary of State, with an air of optimism, joined the call for an "AIDS free generation", highlighting the fact that the tools for its achievement exist. At the same time, her government, through negotiations for the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA), is pushing to radically expand pharmaceutical company monopolies and therefore maintain high prices on and limited access to life-saving medicines for HIV and associated co-morbidities. "Today US trade policy is threatening to undermine US AIDS policy," said Peter Maybarduk of Public Citizen, a prominent US consumer rights group.

AIDS 2012: Call for access to HCV treatment

Michel Kazatchkine, appointed as the UN Secretary-General's new Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Eastern Europe and Central Asia (EECA) before the XIX International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2012) opened in Washington DC, responded to a suggestion during a meeting with EECA conference participants to emphasize access to HCV care, noting that the region’s epidemic is not only a dual epidemic of HIV and drug use but rather a quadruple epidemic of HIV, drug use, TB and HCV. Similar dynamics are seen many countries Eastern Europe and Asia where sharing unsterile injecting equipment is driving HIV epidemics.