Student AIDS Activists Applaud Breakthrough in Gilead’s Policies on AIDS Drugs for Global

The Student Global AIDS Campaign (SGAC) is applauding what it calls “important steps forward and major new promises” taken by Gilead in making its AIDS drugs Tenofovir (Viread) and Truvada affordable and available in Africa and the global South. The Student Global AIDS Campaign—a national network of AIDS activists in high schools and colleges—has been running a campaign focused on Gilead since this winter. That campaign has engaged students from across the country in asking the company to rectify the current situation in which the vast majority of people living with HIV in the world do not have access to Gilead’s AIDS drugs.

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Gilead is now moving to register its drugs in Africa and the global South, is offering a published reduced price in lower-middle-income countries, and is making important new licenses available to Indian generic drug makers.

“It’s a huge change,” said Helene Gayle, former director of the HIV program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in an interview with Bloomberg published yesterday. “We just haven’t seen this kind of willingness to cooperate before.”

“We applaud Gilead’s new energy toward affordable access,” said Erin Burns, SGAC’s national student coordinator and a student at Guildford College. “We began a campaign this year because Gilead, which makes hundreds of millions in profits off of AIDS drugs, hadn’t done the basic paperwork to make its AIDS drugs available in Africa,”

“We believed that they could do more than just the basics—and could be a leader in promoting responsible corporate practices,” said Burns. “People in Africa, Asia, and Latin America deserve to have these drugs properly registered and available through cheap generic means. We are glad to see Gilead taking steps to make this happen.”

Students throughout the US were involved in a letter writing and postcard campaign and students in California and North Carolina took part in demonstrations at Gilead offices this year that garnered significant media attention. Check out this article from a North Carolina AIDS Demonstration.

In meetings with SGAC and the campaign’s partners the American Medical Students Association and Global AIDS Alliance, Gilead promised to register its drugs in Africa and all 97 “access” countries by the end of the year. Gilead also promised a price of $360/patient/year for Tenofovir in “lower-middle income” countries and to license generic drug makers in India to make the drug.

“This is an important step, but is only the beginning of what it will take for everyone to have access to the drugs they need. We’re going to need new action from companies as well as government,” said Jennifer Melton, an SGAC leader at the University of NC who took part in Gilead protests.

Student activists today praised Gilead for taking the steps that it is--including expansive new licensing promises which could result in a handful of Indian generic companies making Gilead's key AIDS drugs for sale in the low-income countries. But, students voiced their solidarity with activists in India who are calling on the Indian government to reject Gilead's move to patent Tenofovir in that country. Such a move would needlessly restrict access to the drug for Indians and HIV+ people around the world who depend on Indian generic drug makers.

"We need a system in which people come before profit--and while Gilead is taking unprecidented steps today, it is only a small step in the broader work of getting treatment to people. The patenting issue illustrates that the system itself is broken when it comes to access to medicines," said SGAC's Matthew Kavanagh.