"Pool Party" protesta contra Merck.

A group of Harvard global health activists staged a protest Friday in front of Merck’s laboratory near the Harvard Medical School to urge the drug company to provide discounted HIV and AIDS medicine to poor countries.

The protest was billed as a “pool party demonstration”—replete with beach balls, an inflatable pool, and students in swim trunks—to demand that Merck “jump into the pool,” a reference to the Medicine Patent Pool.

The Medicine Patent Pool is an organization that negotiates deals with drug companies to ensure the availability in low-income and middle-income countries of discounted medicine to fight the human immunodeficiency virus. In many of these countries, drugs to fight the disease are far too expensive to be affordable to ordinary individuals. The deals struck by the Medicine Patent Pool seek to reduce costs while also attempting to ensure that the companies are minimally impacted by the discounts.

Imagen: Visual representation of the voice of the health community, Manchester