PROTESTORS wearing white medical coats staged a noisy protest outside an India-EU summit in Brussels today to demand continued access to cheap medicine for hundreds of thousands of HIV sufferers in poor countries.
“I’ve seen too many people die! We need to have these medicines,” said doctor Tido Von Schoen Angarer, of the international medical aid group Doctors Without Borders (MSF).
“Hands off our medicine, the EU must listen,” he said.
The protest was staged as India and the 27-nation bloc continue long-stalled negotiations to strike a Free Trade Agreement, which the doctors fear could threaten India’s ability to provide affordable generic medicines.
The protestors say cheap generic drugs from India are vital to lives, particularly to the 33 million people living with HIV in developing countries.
MSF itself buys 80 per cent of its AIDS drugs from India, keeping 160,000 people alive on treatment that has pushed the prices down 99 per cent – from $10,000 (£6,316.98) a year per patient in 2000 to $70 (£44.21) currently.
