Fourteen million people die from treatable diseases every year. Many of these lives could be saved if cheap drugs were available

"It is not right that we cannot get the medicines we need. If we had access to anti-retrovirals we would have a future. I really can't see a future, not for me, not for my children. But we will just keep on struggling."
- Belkis, Dominican Republic

Belkis and her second child, Jennifer, were diagnosed HIV-positive four years ago when Belkis was pregnant with her third daughter, Yania (left). She did not receive the simple medication which would have prevented the virus from passing to her child, so Yania was also born with AIDS.

Belkis can't afford the anti-retroviral drugs that could greatly prolong her and her children's lives. Like millions of other people around the world, Belkis and her children are condemned to death because they are poor. And it could get worse.

Global trading rules - drawn up by rich nations at the World Trade Organisation - oblige all countries to grant at least 20-year patents on new drugs manufactured by the transnational pharmaceutical companies. This will prevent poor countries from producing their own cheaper equivalents of those drugs, and drive medicines even further out of reach of poor people.

The pharmaceutical companies claim that the patents (which effectively put an end to competition) are fair. They argue that patents allow them to recoup their investment in developing new drugs, and to spend more on further research. In fact, as some companies privately admit, developing-country markets are so small that they make little difference to their research agenda.

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Photo by Caldena Aneca/Oxfam