This workshop's premise is taken from the principles of the People’s Health Movement Charter that state:
1. Research and development of medicines should be carried out in a participatory, needs-based manner by accountable institutions and be people and public health oriented.
2. Medical and health technologies (including medicines)should be demystified and subordinated to the health needs of the people.
(see www.phmovement.org)

The five organizations participating in this session represent different strategies for working toward achieving these goals. The presentations will give audience members an overview of the many facets of this complex issue, and how different organizations are addressing them within their particular spheres of interest.

CPATH, the Center of Analysis for Trade and Health, analyzes the health effects of the different Trade Agreements and is coordinating the call by U.S. health organizations to include advocates for the public’s health on the U.S. Trade Representative's Advisory Committees, among them the subcommittee on pharmaceuticals and intellectual property (see www.cpath.org) Speaker: Lily Walkover lwalkover@wesleyan.edu (confirmed)

AMSA, the American Medical Student Association, has as its pharmaceutical policy to promote access to safe, effective, and affordable therapeutics at home and around the world. It challenges the pharmaceutical industry's influence on the health care system, demands access to essential medicines everywhere, and pushes for evidence-based prescribing practices.
Their Pharm Free Campaign aims at educating students, physicians and the public about the professional, ethical and practical consequences of the current medicine-industry relationship. To do so, it encourages medical schools, residency programs and academic medical centers to create "pharm free" policies that define and limit the relationship between students/residents and drug reps. It sees itself as gatekeeper to the vast profits of the pharmaceutical industry. (www.amsa.org) Speaker: Jay D. Bhatt, President, AMSA (Confirmed)

Stop HIV/AIDS in India Initiative is committed to bringing together groups and individuals to coordinate Indian and international advocacy efforts to build and promote a holistic response to the HIV/AIDS pandemics in India. One of its goals is access to affordable generic medicine via India’s Patents Act. The speaker, Vineeta Gupta, lead a protest at the Washington office of Novartis, denouncing the company campaign to strip India of its right to manufacture and distribute its own generics. Novartis is challenging a specific provision in India’s patent law that restricts patenting of medicines to innovations only. If the provision were overturned, patents would be granted far more widely in India, heavily restricting the production of affordable medicines that has become crucial to the treatment of diseases across the developing world. (www.shaii.org) Speaker: Vineeta Gupta, Director SHII (confirmed)

Student Global AIDS Campaign is a national movement of high school and college students committed to bringing and end to HIV and AIDS in the U.S. and around the world. SGAC demands access to treatment, complete funding of the U.S. share of the global HIV and AIDS need and full funding of U.S. prevention and treatment programs, and debt cancellation as a means to make both prevention and live-saving AIDS medications accessible to all. (www.fightglobalaids.org) Speaker: Matt Cavanagh, Executive Director, Global Justice (includes SGAC) (confirmed)

Universities Allied for Essential Medicines works with student and faculty groups across the US, Europe and Canada to help ensure that drugs and other biomedical products are made more accessible in poor countries. Because many life-saving drugs are developed in campus laboratories, universities wield substantial leverage when they license their drugs to pharmaceutical companies. UAEM has constructed model licensing terms and policy documents that universities can use to improve access to life-saving drugs. The basis of this proposal is simple: When a university licenses a promising new drug candidate to a pharmaceutical company, it should require that the company allow the drug to be made available in poor countries at the lowest possible cost. This would have virtually no financial impact on the company or university, but could ultimately save millions of lives. (www.essentialmedicine.org) Speaker from Atlanta Chapter of UAEM (to be confirmed)

The speaker's presentations will be followed by questions, and discussion of the various strategies and how participants can become more involved. The session will be conducted in English.