Stop AIDS - Patent Pool

Join the push for a ‘patent pool’ - the brilliant idea that could make HIV treatment affordable for millions of the world’s poorest people. Current copyright and patent laws keep the price of life saving Anti-Retroviral Drugs (ARVs) out of reach for 5 million of the world’s poorest people.

You can help them get the HIV treatment that they desperately need.

How can you help?

GlaxoSmithKleine (GSK) is Britain’s largest pharmaceutical company. If they show leadership on this issue by joining the patent pool, others will follow. This is a first but vital step.

Email the Chief Executive Officer and tell him you want GSK to join the patent pool and help save millions of lives.

Less than 40 per cent of children who need treatment for HIV globally are getting it. This neglect is appalling. The pharmaceutical industry could play a key role in ending this injustice, but needs to show leadership.

I am writing to ask you, as CEO of GlaxoSmithKline, Britain’s largest pharmaceutical company, to add all your HIV drug patents to the UNITAID Patent Pool.

The UNITAID patent pool will encourage research into new paediatric treatments, bring down drug prices and lead to the production of essential, new fixed dose combinations. It is our best hope of saving the lives of thousands of children, as well as sustaining and expanding access to treatment for adults.

You have acknowledged a responsibility to do more to address suffering in the developing world and I welcome that. Please join the UNITAID Patent Pool and help to transform the pharmaceutical industry and the world.

Yours sincerely,

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What is a patent pool?

A patent pool is a system where drug manufacturers agree, for a fair fee, to give up their HIV drugs patents. Currently, when you develop a drug it is automatically patented for 20 years.

If ALL pharmaceutical companies join the patent pool it will give companies the chance to develop these drugs for sale in the developing world.

How will a patent pool help?

By pooling all HIV drug patents, competing manufacturers can get permission to produce the badly needed drugs
This competition will bring prices down
It will help the innovation that will create the essential new combinations and child-friendly drugs needed