The 2nd Access to Healthcare in Africa Conference will concentrate on challenges to quality, product availability, access and management in effective health care, with a focus on HIV and AIDS, TB and Malaria.

By attending the Conference at Emperors Palace Convention Centre in Johannesburg on 15 and 16 September 2009, you can share your experiences in health care management with your peers while tapping into the knowledge and insight of experts in this field.

Register now and secure your place.

Health Action International (HAI) Africa in collaboration with other civil society organisations will from Monday 22 to Friday 26 June 2009 visit public health institutions to survey the stock-out of essential medicines in five sub-Saharan African countries.

The TransAtlantic Consumer Dialogue (TACD), Health Action International (HAI) and Knowledge Ecology International (KEI) hosted a public meeting on the issue of intellectual
property rights enforcement in Brussels on Wednesday, June 10th. Everyday we hear about counterfeiting and piracy and about anti-counterfeiting and new enforcement initiatives of governments and industry. HAI, KEI and TACD presented two panels that challenged the direction and rationale of several of these intellectual property rights initiatives, including EU regulation 1383 on border measures and the proposed “Anticounterfeiting” trade agreement (ACTA). The enforcement of private intellectual property right claims is a complex and important area of public policy that touches on issues such as personal privacy, civil rights, freedom, social and economic development, among others.

Access to essential medicines remains a major challenge in most African countries. For the majority of Africans, essential medicines remain largely unavailable and inaccessible.

Factors affecting availability and affordability range from corruption to lack of proper planning that result in stock-outs of medicines for diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis, as well as common and manageable conditions such as diabetes and HIV.

A new booklet on the struggle for access to essential medicines in East and Southern Africa has been released by the Stop Stock-outs campaign partners with the support of Open Society Institute (OSI). It contains a selection of short stories from different parts of East and Southern Africa, describing the great difficulties ordinary people face in accessing essential medicines. 

The booklet further brings out the glaring inequalities that exist between the rich and poor when it comes to accessing basic services. It reveals how most people in many African countries have been forced to forego treatment, accept compromised services or turn to quack cures, while others live in fear of premature death simply because their limited income affects their health choices.

Call on the EU to allow life-saving generic medicines to reach world’s poor

A shipment of the antibiotic, Amoxicillin, manufactured in India and destined for the Republic of Vanuatu in the Pacific, was seized by customs officials on 5 May, 2009, while in transit through Frankfurt, Germany. Amoxicillin is an essential medicine used to treat a wide range of bacterial infections.

Health Action International (HAI), Oxfam International, BUKO-pharma, Medico International and Third World Network urge the German customs to provide full and transparent information about this seizure and call on the European Commission to take immediate steps to ensure that its regulations and laws do not deny developing countries timely access to essential medicines.

In this latest case, customs authorities seized a shipment of 3,047,000 pills of Amoxicillin (250 mg), worth approximately 28,000 Euros for four weeks before releasing it to Vanuatu. The batch was detained on grounds of suspected trademark infringement. This quantity of tablets is equivalent to 76,000 courses of treatment. Customs authorities then informed GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), which received the letter on 13 May. Seven days later, GSK informed the German customs authorities that there was no trademark infringement. GSK is the former patent holder for “Amoxil”, a brand name amoxicillin.