Pharma drug patents vs people's lives - "Fire in the blood" doco

I remember when I told my sister here in Sydney that I was HIV+. She thought I was going to cark it within the next few years and die a horrible death. I was diagnosed in 2009. She thought that because of the images coming out of Africa. 

Often you have to become a bit of an educator in such situations. I told her people don't die of HIV anymore, or at least it's not a death sentence. Her exact question that followed was "So people are dying in Africa because they can't afford the drugs?" My answer was a simple "Yes".

Here is part one and two of a two part documentary that goes deeply into how the US drug companies charge impossibly high prices for HIV drugs, so high in fact that Africa was only 1% of their market. Virtually nothing. Yet they refused to drop their insane prices, in the face of the African epidemic. Eventually people started making generic HIV drugs for humanitarian purposes.

I know the gov pay most of the HIV meds here, I only pay $3 a prescription. There's rumours too that in NSW HIV drugs may become free as they already are in Victoria. It still astounds me though how much these companies still charge the Australian gov on my behalf. Simply the chance of where I was born means that I live, whereas Africans died en mass with those same drugs existing but unaffordable for either them or their gov. 

Why should a corporation choose who lives and who dies? Why should where you live decide who lives or dies?



Part two here