Hedge Fund Billionaires Are New Target for Hepatitis C Cure Protests

 The New York City home and offices of former hedge fund manager Julian H. Robertson were targeted by protest groups in a series of simultaneous direct actions in early May. Robertson is ranked No. 512 on Forbes' list of "the world's billionaires" with a reported net worth of $3.4 billion. "Robertson is making a killing off of people with Hep C," read one sign.

The protests targeted high profile hedge fund investors who have reaped substantial profits from the California-based pharmaceutical giant Gilead Sciences. Hedge Clippers, a coalition of labor, community and social justice groups including VOCAL-NY, seeks to draw links between hedge funds and income inequality, mass imprisonment, climate change, health disparities, and other challenges. Gilead has been targeted because of what has been called "exorbitant" pricing for its groundbreaking new class of drugs that can cure hepatitis C virus (HCV), such as Sovaldi, and the enormous profits they have generated.

HCV infection "is the most common chronic blood borne infection in the United States [and] approximately 3.2 million persons are chronically infected," according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). About 150 million people around the globe are living with HCV -- disproportionately the poor, uninsured and incarcerated -- which in its advanced stages can cause cirrhosis or liver cancer.

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Spain: Hepatitis C patients protest in Madrid demanding access to medicine

Nayara is only 21 years old and has already reached the final stage of Hepatits C, a burden she has had to endure since the day she was born.

She was infected with Hepatitis C by her mother from birth. A disease that kills 12 people a day in Spain alone, according to the platform of those affected.

Dozens of those affected by the disease have gathered with their friends and families outside Gilead's Spanish headquarters to protest. The US pharmaceutical company produces Sovaldi, the medicine that can save the 200,000 people, who like Nayara, are infected by Hepatitis C in Spain.

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Spain: Health Thousands Protest in Spain for Better Hepatitis C Treatment

Thousands of people affected by hepatitis C have marched in several Spanish cities to press for easier access to latest-generation medicines for the deadly liver disease.

The Platform of People Affected by Hepatitis C, which organized the protests, says the government is applying a "confused and selective" approach to treatment by not providing expensive drugs to all patients equally.

One protest started early Saturday at Madrid's 12 de Octubre hospital and marched 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) to Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's office.

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Spanish hepatitis C patients to march for access to expensive new drugs

Podemos leader asks sufferers to go with him to Brussels to explain their plight to MEPs 

Hepatitis C patients will march in Madrid on Saturday to demand access to expensive new drugs that the government only offers sparingly through the public health system.

“We will demand to be seen by [Prime Minister Mariano] Rajoy,” said Mario Cortés, president of the support group Plataforma de Afectados por la Hepatitis C, which is organizing the rally.

This group has been staging a sit-in at the capital’s 12 de Octubre hospital for the last 20 days, and is now ready to take its demands right to La Moncloa prime ministerial palace.

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