Join our campaign Europe! Hands Off Our Medicine

Por: MSF

In India this week, the European Commission is thrashing out a deal that could block access to life-saving, affordable generic medicines for many patients in developing countries.

Médecins Sans Frontières relies on these medicines – produced in countries like India and Brazil – to carry out its humanitarian work with some of the world’s poorest people. Millions more in developing countries depend on these medicines to stay alive and healthy. But EC trade negotiators are set on driving out generic medicines with devastating consequences for patients. MSF’s own work will be severely compromised:

“What the Europeans are doing is effectively snatching the medicines out of our hands. Through the low cost of generic medicines, we have been able to put more and more patients on AIDS medicines. This has meant a lot of hope for our patients who can work again, who can bring up their children again. But if Europe has its way and shuts off this source, we may have to break that hope and we would just the success of what has been achieved here in the last five years.” MSF doctor, Marius Mueller, Medical Coordinator, Kenya.

Beyond events in New Delhi this week, these negotiations are part of a much wider aggressive push by Europe to close access to generic medicines and trade profits over human lives. The European Commission is actively pursuing this damaging agenda both in ongoing bilateral trade talks with countries in Asia and Latin America as well as driving it through in the ACTA negotiations that are now near finalised.

Europe must be stopped in its tracks before it’s too late, generic medicines are wiped out and patients in poor countries pay the price.

For those whom these medicines mean life or death, Please join our campaign and tell Europe to keep its HANDS OFF our medicine.

Click on the link below to send a letter to the EC Trade Commissioner, Karel De Gucht, and European Union governments calling on him to put a halt to Europe’s destructive trade policies and to commit to an agenda that will offer access to medicines for all.