The story of HIV AIDS

I work in an NGO and in the course of my work, I meet a lot of people...and recently one of the people I met was a woman who was originally a man...and the problem was that she was HIV + and didn't have AIDS...and she was on Anti Retro-viral Therapy (ART)...for the uninitiated, there are three 'lines' or three phases of medicines in ART....now access to TDF (Tenofovir Disoproxil Fumarate) is critical for patients to survive in these phases of ART....and consumption of this drug is recommended by the ART guidelines provided by WHO as well...
the problem is of course that this bloody drug is under patent application by a company called Gilead Sciences, a huge company raking in the profits...
I quote from Businessweek: "...The product called Atripla, hit the market in July 2006, and bought in sales of 205.7 million dollars by December 2006...a strong launch for a drug that analysts estimate could become a $ 2 billion-a- year hit..." (that's John Martin, CEO of Gilead since 96)
On the other hand, Alternative Law Forum, ALF, based in Bangalore has filed a pre grant opposition on the premise that it involves only addition of a salt (fumaric acid) to an existing compound (Tenofovir Disoproxil) and is therefore not an invention...
Of course, patients with HIV AIDS faced a similar problem with GSK (GlaxoSmith Kline) filing a patent application for Combivir, another fixed dose drug containing two essential elements...

the companies say that if the patents are not granted, then it would be tantamount to the Indian government blocking innovation in the field of medicine, and it would violate internation patent laws, and of course discourage investment in India, discourage R&D in India and the list goes on..

The reality my friends, is that people are DYING, because they can't afford ART...not the second line onwards anyway, and to come back to this person I met, she was on the first line of ART and she was telling me about people she knew who were on the second line and how they couldn't afford it...how the Karnataka government had just given up on people who were beyond the first line...their focus is now on prevention..anyway the people who are on second line are going to die..so who cares..lets not allow more people to get HIV AIDS..and this is the esteemed government stance..in not so many words of course...

Anyway, if I remember right, the Karnataka government was supposed to put up 42 ART centres all over Karnataka. These centres were supposed to subsidize ART for people who couldn't afford it...as of September last year, there were 11 in Karnataka...and even these, as far as I know, give out only the first line to patients...

and the story just keeps getting worse...this lady that I met the other day and who was on the first line, tells me, " I have to eat eight to nine times a day, because the medicines I take suck out the nutrients and energy from my body. If i don't keep eating throughout the day, then I faint...and its happened to me several times. I work for a NGO on sexual minorities, and they are starved for funds...you know I get paid only Rs. 4500, and all my money goes on food and medication...I'm finished if I go to second line...the government doesn't care about people like us. To them we are as good as dead"

The biggest pity for me is that nobody cares anymore...it was an issue when the patents issue came out..i'm not writing anything new here..its all there on the net, on the papers..if one cares to look...the point is that the media has to move on, we have to move on and the issue is dying in silence, along with all the patients who cannot afford the medication....
We care to find out only if family or friends get affected..otherwise, its news, we feel pity, and then something like a Abhishek Aishwarya wedding has to come up and everything else is forgotten....I guess I really am bitter about this thing...what is really needed is public support, some pressure from the public not to grant these guys those patents...and get some signature petitions going by us...after all we are what is called the "civil society"...
but i know that this is just a stupid blog, nobody will care and the issue will go on..some of us will fight, others will have selective amnesia...what the hell, life goes on

Of politics and such like!

This Karnataka state is getting increasingly tough to inhabit...for me, and i'm sure for others as well...
i mean, allow me to state some of the things happening in June alone...

I watched a film on Nandigram occupation, nay, invasion of land (with not so subtle games by Buddhadeb & Mamata & Co.) and after the screening, we had a discussion on how Ramanagaram slums are being occupied for SEZ...i read in the papers that another village, called Nandigud in Karnataka is also being acquired...and they're thinking about getting Tata Institute of Social Sciences for doing a baseline survey...sheesh..how low we stoop for credibility.

My friend lives in Frazer town, and the corporator and MLA asked the slum dwellers there to vacate and asked them to live in the park for a few days. In the meantime he would get them separate accommodation..so you had a whole slum living in the park, and to make matters worse, the residents living near the park complained about these "dirty people" being a health risk and being an eyesore and all that kind of nonsense...

The 73rd Amendment to the Indian constitution is being used to take all rights away from Gram Panchayats in Karnataka. Basically the deal is that a Gram Panchayat has the right to identify beneficiaries in 29 areas which include housing, Below Poverty Line Card (BPL), ration card, etc etc...and the allegation from State is that these Panchayats are not doing work in time. So the new Act proposes that if these Panchayats don't identify beneficiaries in time, then all power of identification of beneficiaries goes to MLAs. So basically even though the proposed act, uses the housing as a pivot, Gram Sabha members are freaking out because it says housing and other functions...and the complaint from the Panchayats is that none of the info on schemes reach them on time, funds are delayed, ya dah ya dah....so anyway, there was a huge protest on the 5th of July and about 2300 people turned up, some of them Gram Panchayat members but the majority of them were Gram Sabha members, basically people living in a village and coming within the purview of the Panchayat, ordinary people deciding to come all the way to Bangalore, spending their own money to protest against this act. The surprising thing was that there was nobody from the media, even though the Hindu covered it...but even they came only to the press conference organized near the Vidhan Soudha...but on second thoughts, it was not that surprising.

Moving on, we hear that the Centre has approved of the Nandagudi SEZ in "prinicple" whatever that means. What it does mean is that the Karnataka State govt has recommended that it be passed, just like the State of Maharashtra did....I think about 8000 odd hectares of land will be used to develop a township, complete with swimming pools and shopping malls and all...the juggernaut of urbanization rolls on...we hear that a slum area in Ramnagaram has also been granted clearance for a SEZ....its amazing that there is no large scale protest against this kind of blatant violation of basic right to land...in the name of economic growth, land acquisition is taking place at a fanatic place...a virtual feast for the big guys...which was not the purpose of the SEZ in the first place...anyway, the govt is very conveniently blind to this fact and is clearing things faster than anbody can respond...I've seen some coverage from the mainstream media but these are increasingly getting confined to the inside pages...pity..

Today we find that the govt might have manipulated tenders so that only few of the big companies can provide free bicycles for school children in govt schools...we have made a scam even in cycles...this is the limit...no actually that's not true...lalu's fodder scam was the limit..but this comes pretty close..i mean, who wants the IAS? good old city corporations are good enough for that extra buck...depressing shit i tell you...