[Ip-health] WHO plea to drugs companies - Don't take out patents on new medicines

[Riaz K Tayob]

After all of us in the Equitable Health Community allowed the Africa
group proposal on TRIPs and Public Health to be pushed aside by no less
than fraud (by Lamy and WTO staffers) this response seems to be somewhat
progress but muted nevertheless...

WHO plea to drugs companies

Sarah Boseley
Tuesday April 4, 2006
The Guardian

Drug companies should not take out patents on their new medicines or
enforce patents in poor countries if that is likely to prevent patients
from getting them, an influential commission set up by the World Health
Organisation said yesterday.

The Commission on Intellectual Property Rights, Innovation and Public
Health spent two years drawing up proposals on the contentious and
hard-fought issues of access to medicines in poor countries. Controversy
over deaths from HIV/Aids, which has become a treatable disease in the
rich world, was behind the setting up of the commission under the former
Swiss president Ruth Dreifuss.

The pharmaceutical industry has long argued that patents, granting a
20-year exclusive right to market a drug, are not the problem. It says
that the absence of clinics, hospitals and medical staff are the real
reason why people do not get treated. But the commission disagrees,
saying generic companies should be allowed to make cheap copies in poor
countries.

"In low-income countries they should avoid filing patents or enforcing
them in ways that might inhibit access," the commission says. It
encourages companies to license others to make their drugs.

Ms Dreifuss said she recognised the profit orientation of the industry,
"but we think they can do more". More transparency was needed, so that
poor countries knew which medicines were under patent, and pricing
policies were clear. Governments should also do more, the report says;
in particular, rich countries should devote an increasing part of their
healthcare research and development spending on the needs of poor countries.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/medicine/story/0,,1746355,00.html