GUATEMALA CITY — Carmina Garcia rises before the sun each morning, taking pleasure in the first yellow rays of dawn. But it's the pink and white tablets that keep her going.
Found to be HIV-positive shortly before her husband died of AIDS-related complications last fall, an ailing Garcia was convinced of her own death sentence. But generic drugs have kept the virus in check and restored 60 lost pounds to her frame.
"I now have hope," said the 52-year-old grandmother and flower vendor, who gets her medicine free from a nonprofit clinic.
Public health experts fear that hope might fade for Garcia and thousands of the region's chronically ill if the Dominican Republic-Central American Free Trade Agreement, known as CAFTA, is approved this year.
Under the pact American pharmaceutical giants would gain a five-year edge on the development of new drugs by low-cost competitors. Generic versions of name-brand drugs are the main weapon for battling the AIDS pandemic in the developing world.
Healthcare activists say those intellectual property protections would drive up the cost of treating chronic conditions, particularly HIV/AIDS, sufferers of which routinely develop resistance to old medications. About 40 million people worldwide are infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, and more than 275,000 of them live in the six Latin American CAFTA nations, according to United Nations statistics.
The prospect of less-affordable medicines has fueled opposition to CAFTA in Central America, particularly in Guatemala, where public opinion has turned overwhelmingly against the trade pact despite its passage by legislators here in March.
Similar concerns have been raised in other parts of the region, where three countries -- Nicaragua, Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic -- have yet to ratify the pact. In addition to Guatemala, it has been approved in Honduras and El Salvador.
Though CAFTA supporters hope to win U.S. approval of the pact before Memorial Day, they are still far short of the votes needed for passage. Critics in the U.S. -- including many Democrats and labor unions -- say the pact doesn't contain tough enough protections for labor and the environment.
With opposition mounting on both sides of the border, President Bush went to bat Wednesday for the controversial agreement, saying it was needed to "create jobs and to strengthen democracy in our hemisphere." Though Central America isn't a huge market, the Bush administration considers the pact key to building a free trade zone from Alaska to the tip of South America. U.S. supporters fear that a high-profile setback would weaken that effort and others around the globe.
