(c) peripheries

The Times reports on the latest media coup from Bono’s PRODUCT(RED): a digital music service to help Africa pay for antiretroviral medicines.
“The still-unnamed service, which is scheduled to start in September, will deliver customers three new pieces of exclusive content a week for a monthly fee of $5. Half of that money will go through (RED) to the Global Fund, and the other half will go to the artists who contribute songs and to their record companies.”
U2, Bob Dylan, Elvis Costello and Elton John are amongst some of the …

Kevin de Cock briefly admitted that the threat of an heterosexual AIDS pandemic outside of Africa had disappeared, but the pandemic is well and alive in Africa where it is affecting more and more heterosexual couples as observed in a study by Dr Kristin Dunkle and colleagues from the Emory Center for AIDS Research in the US and published in The Lancet.
The Atlanta team analysed Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) data from 1739 Zambian women, 540 Zambian men, 1176 Rwandan women, and 606 Rwandan men. Using various analyses models they …

Today the U.S. Government, through the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), announced that it is supporting life-saving antiretroviral treatment for approximately 1.73 million men, women and children worldwide, including nearly 1.68 million people in sub-Saharan Africa.

Rating 3.00 out of 5

In her book The Wisdom of Whores Elizabeth Pisani observes that “Funnily enough, it is often those [governments] that are secure in their popular majority (such as Thatcher in 1986) or those that don’t have to worry too much about voters (such as Iran and China) that can afford to be compassionate.” (p.254)

This against-the-flow statement has gained some weight this week when Public Health Minister Chaiya Sasomsab of the 2007 democratically elected Thai government announced that the the compulsory licences (CL) issued by the military government of Surayud Chulanont soon …

Pro-Pharma lobbyists are at it again, this time in an editorial of The Wall Street Journal (Good Medicine for Thailand – May 29,2008):
“Slowly, the war on drug patents in Thailand seems to be turning. Last week the government removed one of the most vocal opponents of intellectual property rights from the board of the state-owned Government Pharmaceutical Organization. It’s a small step, but an important one for restoring Thailand’s international reputation and protecting patients’ health.
Vichai Chokevivat strongly supported Thailand’s violation of drug companies’ patents over the past two years. Along …