Presenting the 2014 Annual Report, Christine Stegling reflects on an eventful and successful year

I am proud to present our 2014 annual report which highlights some of our exciting initiatives with communities to expand access to HIV treatment. In this year’s annual report you will get a glimpse of how we supported grassroots organizing, conducted national health advocacy and influenced global policy in 2014, so that people can lead healthier lives.
Our work occurs in the context of a global development discourse that increasingly calls on governments to own and finance national AIDS programmes, especially when they have been classified as middle income countries. Such a strategy ignores that the majority of people living with HIV reside in middle income countries, and that many remain unable to afford treatment or to access services due to stigma and discrimination. ITPC has been at the centre of this debate, arguing that development aid needs to be based on a more sophisticated analysis.

Regardless of where you are born, your income, sexuality or gender, everyone has a right to HIV treatment and other essential medicines. Since ITPC’s inception, we have built a movement based on the power of communities worldwide to advocate for this right. In 2014, new issues and opportunities emerged on the treatment landscape – such as the remarkable scientific development of new medicines that can cure Hepatitis C, followed by a shocking series of pricing and patent moves to keep the same medicine out of reach for the majority of the world’s people living with the disease. This is why we have increased our efforts to empower communities on intellectual property literacy. Our work has helped activists around the world respond to the emerging crisis of medicines that are unaffordable due to the abuse of international intellectual property rights.
We sincerely hope that the community activism of recent months will result in affordable medicines and a more realistic and just framework to guide development aid in the years to come.
As ITPC rallies to secure treatment access for all in need, we must also come up with new ways of understanding poverty and inequality, and shape international health policy and funding to match the real world needs – to ensure every person can fulfil their right to health.
In solidarity,
Christine Stegling
Annual Report 2014 (double pages spread PDF) for viewing online
Annual Report 2014 (single pages PDF) for easy printing