PRETORIA - About 2,000 activists and Aids sufferers have protested outside the American embassy in Pretoria on the first day of a landmark court case launched by the global drugs industry aimed at preventing the South African Government from providing cheap generic anti-retroviral drugs to treat people infected with the virus.
"The South African economy will die along with millions of workers who have HIV-Aids [if the drug companies succeed in their action]," said one of the protesters, Bheki Buthelezi.
"All the while, the rich companies of the West get richer."
At the gates of the embassy, Robert F Godec, a US economic affairs counsellor, angered protesters by refusing to take delivery of a memo setting out their case.
"I have no comment except to say that we thank you for sharing your views and will relay them to the US Government," he said from behind a phalanx of police.
Protest marches were staged in several South African cities to mark the start of the case that pits the world's big pharmaceutical companies against local laws that enable drug patents to be circumvented to obtain cheap drugs for the poor during health crises – such as the HIV-Aids pandemic that has infected 4.2 million South Africans.
Aids and human rights organisations are urging drug multinationals to drop the case – and for the American Government to help persuade them to do so.
The protesters say the drug companies are putting profits before people's lives.
The drug companies argue that if they lose patent protections in developing countries it will be a disaster for their drug research and development.
The case is scheduled to last until next Monday, but is likely to take much longer.
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