[Ip-health] Financial Times: Weaker drug patents urged to help poor

[Thiru Balasubramaniam]

Weaker drug patents urged to help poor
By Frances Williams in Geneva
Published: April 3 2006 18:45 | Last updated: April 3 2006 18:45

Governments and the pharmaceutical industry should weaken patent
protection and enforcement to help ensure access to medicines for poor
people in developing countries, according to a World Health
Organisation report released on Monday.

More than half the people in the poorest parts of Africa and Asia have
little or no access to essential drugs because they cannot afford them
or because health systems are weak, the report on intellectual property
and public health says.

But while noting that the drugs patent system does not stimulate
innovation where there is little market demand =96 and thus little
prospect of a profitable return =96 the report stops short of questioning
the patent incentive model for biomedical research.

Ruth Dreifuss, chair of the 10-strong commission which produced the
report and an ex-president of Switzerland, said yesterday: =93We are not
discussing the foundation of intellectual property rights.=94

However, she said developing countries should take advantage of the
flexibility offered by the World Trade Organisation=92s intellectual
property agreement, including compulsory licensing powers.

The report, which contains more than 50 recommendations, was due for
publication in January but was delayed because of disagreements among
commission members over the role of patent protection in blocking
affordable access to drugs in poor countries.

The report also urges developing nations to resist pressure to go
beyond international patent obligations in bilateral and regional trade
agreements, such as those negotiated recently by the US with Central
America.

However, three panel members said in reservations annexed to the report
that =93patents are not the issue=94, arguing that access to medicines is
constrained primarily by poverty, poor health systems and bad policies
that raise costs.

The International Policy Network, a London-based thinktank partly
funded by the pharmaceutical industry, said last week that poor-country
governments directly priced people out of treatment, for instance by
imposing tariffs and taxes of up to 55 per cent on imported medicines.

Additional reporting by Andrew Jack in London