Many of the politicians there mainly represent the interest of big business. For instance we found that as AIDS activists in South Africa, that the George Bush regime tends to, will provide AIDS funding to developing countries only if they use brand name drugs produced by multinationals like Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline and Boehringer Ingelheim.
And we've been campaigning as AIDS activists in poor countries like South Africa for people living with HIV to be able to access life-saving AIDS drugs. And these companies artificially inflate the price of the drugs by abusing intellectual property law. Which means that millions of poor people are dying of AIDS right now in poor countries like South Africa because basically the pharmaceutical industry's right to make a profit is put above ordinary peoples' right to live by many G8 governments. And also there's a very sexually conservative agenda that is promoted by the Bush regime by its AIDS funding.
In particular they'll use the money to promote abstinence-only education. For instance recently for Brazil, they put a pre-condition that Brazil condemn prostitution in order to access this funding. And we say as women in developing countries, we actually have sexual and reproductive rights. We have the right to access termination of pregnancy. We have the right to have safer sex with men. And we want funding from Northern countries like the US to be able to exercise our sexual and reproductive rights.
We also want funding for more AIDS drugs to be provided. And we want to be able to provide generic drugs made in our countries. We've actually been very disappointed to note that India, for instance, has been pressurised into scrapping its own generic drugs industry. Which is going to mean that millions of poor people can't access affordable AIDS drugs. For us it's a life and death issue that more funding be provided by the G8. But also that they scrap these illegitimate conditions which are resulting in deaths of millions of people.
HIV/AIDS in South Africa