Washington, DC — As several thousand AIDS activists took to the streets of Pretoria carrying signs that said "Lives before profits," global drug giants went to court seeking to prevent the South African government from cutting its costs by importing or making generic, and therefore cheaper, anti-AIDS drugs. Legislation for this purpose was passed more than three years ago.

Implementation of the Medicines and Related Substances Control Amendment Act has been held up since its passage in 1997 because the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association of South Africa(PMA) on behalf of 39 global drug companies claim that generic imports put their intellectual proerty rights at risk.

In that three-year period close to half a million South Africams have died from the AIDS epidemic that has swept across the southern African nation. The hearing at the High Court is expected to last until March 12. "Five thousand sick South Africans will be alive at the beginning of the week-long hearing and dead (of AIDS) by the end of it," an Oxfam representative told the crowd

"HIV/AIDS is like a foreign army on the rampage," COSATU General Secretary Zwelinzima Vavi told the protestors.

The big pharmaceutical companies argue that they need 20 years of patent protection to recover what it cost them to research and develop drugs. It takes, they say, $US1bn and at least 12 years to get a new medicine to market.

The organizations gathered at the Pretoria court call the case a "litmus test" over whether profits or human lives count more with the giant drug companies. With more than 30 million people, mainly in developing nations, living with HIV/AIDS and without access to affordable drugs, the issue is "whether developing countries...can shop around in the global market place for cheaper drugs," a representative of Medicins Sans Frontieres told Reuters at the courthouse.

Protests are taking place in other cities around the world.