[Ip-health] Inter Press Service News Agency: Asian Govts Push Generic Drugs

[Thiru Balasubramaniam]

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=3D35877

HEALTH:
Asian Govts Push Generic Drugs
Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Dec 18 (IPS) - In moves that are winning them praise, two
South-east Asian governments -- in Thailand and the Philippines --
appear determined to push ahead with plans to provide cheaper generic
drugs even if they incur the wrath of pharmaceutical giants.

In both cases, India finds itself roped into these groundbreaking
efforts as a major producer of affordable generic medicines. Thailand
recently issued a compulsory licence to break the patent of the drug
Efavirenz, a vital anti-AIDS drug produced by the multinational Merck,
to import generic version of the medicine from India.

Philippines, on the other hand, appears keen to fight a legal battle
with the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer in its drive to import a generic
version of Norvasc, a drug needed by heart patients, from Indian
manufacturers. Manila's case was strengthened in mid-November when
Filipino patients who need the cheaper drug joined the court case to
defend their rights for affordable medicines, making it a three-way
tussle.

Such measures in the interest of a country's health over private sector
wealth come at a time when =91'pharmaceutical companies are on the
offensive in developing countries, trying to undermine existing world
trade rules to prevent developing countries from getting affordable
medicines,'' Oxfam, the international development agency, said this
week.

Pressure from developed countries where the pharmaceutical companies
are based has also dissuaded developing countries in South-east Asia
from exerting their rights to secure affordable medicines to deal with
major public health emergencies they face at home.

These rights were guaranteed at the 2001 ministerial meeting of the
World Trade Organisation (WTO) in the Middle Eastern city of Doha. At
that meeting, governments from both the developing and developed world
endorsed the trade-related intellectual property rights (TRIPS),
including the safeguards enabling governments in the South to access or
produce cheaper generic drugs in the face of a public health crisis.

Issuing a compulsory license was one option, enabling a country to
locally produce a generic version of a brand name drug to meet domestic
demand. The other was parallel importing, where a country can import a
generic drug into its local market despite an expensive brand-name
medicine being guaranteed exclusive patent rights.

Thailand's decision to issue a compulsory license to import the generic
version of Efavirenz till it starts producing the version locally in
six months was a first since it passed the Drug Patent Act nearly three
decades ago.

=91'Thailand is completely within the law under TRIPS to seek an
alternative to the drug Merck's producers,'' says Paul Cawthorne, Thai
country coordinator for Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF - or Doctors
Without Borders), the international relief agency that has been leading
a campaign for cheaper drugs in the developing world. =91'Thailand was
faced with a supply problem of this drug due to a massive global
demand. The high price was also an issue.''

The measure taken by Bangkok should strengthen its case when it
negotiates the price of drugs with other pharmaceutical companies in
the future, he added in an interview. =91'The pharmaceutical companies
will know that the Thai government will now not hesitate to get a
better deal, cheaper drugs. Since it said that this is the first time
to break a patent but not the last.''

=91'It is important for developing countries in the region to make
similar moves to ensure that they use their rights under TRIPS,''
Jacques-chai Chomthongde, research associate at Focus on the Global
South, a Bangkok-based think tank, told IPS. =91'I hope what is happening
in Thailand will encourage other developing countries to pursue a
similar line.''

The Merk's product, which is used as a first- and second-line of
medication needed by people living with HIV to prolong their lives,
cost patients 41 US dollars a month. The generic version slashes that
price in half, being available at 22 dollars a month.

Thailand's quest to offer cheaper drugs for its citizens infected with
the killer disease AIDS is in keeping with a pattern established four
years ago, when the state owned pharmaceutical agency started producing
a local line of generic anti-AIDS drugs that cost 37.50 dollars for a
month's course.

Cheaper medicines together with a universal health care package have
seen Thailand emerge as a leader among developing countries offering
anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs for HIV/AIDS patients. Currently some
85,000 people are covered by this medical care initiative out of over
600,000 people living with HIV. Yet public health experts warn that the
country should be ready to supply the second-line therapy of ARVs as
the first-line drugs lose their potency.

In the Philippines, the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer has turned the heat
on Manila after it filed charges earlier in the year against two
government agencies for importing the hypertension drug Norvasc, over
which Pfizer enjoys a monopoly in the Philippines. =91'Pfizer earns 60
million dollars a year in the Philippines selling Norvasc at more than
twice the price it charges in other countries -- even though heart
disease is the country's number one killer and more than 40 percent of
Filipinos do not have access to medicines,'' states Oxfam.

=91'This case is setting a precedent and the government's ability to
secure cheaper generic drugs will depend on its outcome,'' Shalimar
Vitan, trade campaign coordinator for Oxfam in the Philippines, told
IPS during a telephone interview from Manila. =91'It is also a first for
consumers to fight for their rights against Pfizer. There has been no
other opportunity for them.''

Filipino public health and fair trade activists fear that a Pfizer
victory could undermine further the promises held up at the Doha WTO
meeting, since it could strengthen the drug company's patent protection
clauses and bolster other pharmaceutical giants in the Philippines to
follow. That flies in the face of the decision by the state-owned
Philippine International Trading Corporation and the Bureau of Food and
Drugs being =91'legal under Filipino law,'' they say.

=91'If Pfizer is successful, it will severely limit the government's
ability to access cheaper medicines and assert its right to enforce
TRIPS safeguards,'' states Oxfam. (END/2006)

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Thiru Balasubramaniam
Geneva Representative
CPTech
voice +41.22.791.6727
fax +41.22.723.2988
mobile +41 76 508 0997
thiru@cptech.org