TAGline Fall 2016

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HEALTH, HUMAN RIGHTS, and SOCIAL JUSTICE

By Tim Horn

Maximizing HIV, tuberculosis (TB), and viral hepatitis outcomes depends on the availability of state-of-the-art diagnostic and prognostic tools, engagement in expert and supportive care, and access to safe and effective drugs. Numerous technical barriers to these core components of health and survival exist, such as failures to maintain or improve healthcare infrastructure and capacity building, inadequate funding commitments, bureaucracy and corruption, and corporate rapacity, all of which are priorities for Treatment Action Group and its advocacy partners.

But it’s not simply about advancing good global health policies. It’s also about pushing for good global policies for health, notably those that take aim at the larger social, political, and economic conditions that exacerbate disparities and inequities among those living with, and at risk for, HIV, TB, and viral hepatitis. In this issue of TAGline, several TAG staff members call out some of the most critical social and structural challenges that we continue to face in ending these pandemics.

• Science and Solidarity
  Using human rights to strengthen TB research and access
  By Mike Frick
• Who’s Responsible?
  Pharma’s Obligations Under the Right to Science
  By Erica Lessem and Brian Citro
• Countering the Contagion of Racism Through Resistance
  Upholding narratives of Black science and treatment activism, and community mobilization in HIV/AIDS and TB
  By Suraj Madoori
• Beyond Tuskegee
  A case for a racial justice agenda in treatment and research
  By Kenyon Farrow
• Decriminalization is a Public Health Strategy
  We can’t end the viral hepatitis epidemics unless we end the war on drug users
  By Annette Gaudino
• Rallying the Multitude to Free the (generic) HCV Cure
  Effective responses to the burgeoning hepatitis C pandemic requires solidarity between the global North and South
  By Bryn Gay
• Toward Health Equity
  We will not end HIV as an epidemic without the expertise and leadership of Black and Latino gay and bisexual men and transgender people of color.
  By Jeremiah Johnson