[Ip-health] The Guardian: Drug firms seek to stop generic HIV treatment

[Sheila.SHETTLE@geneva.msf.org]

Drug firms seek to stop generic HIV treatment

Randeep Ramesh in New Delhi
Thursday May 11, 2006
The Guardian

 Multinational drug firms have begun to seek patents for Aids drugs in
India, a main source of cheap treatments, provoking protests from
campaigners and patients who say this will stifle supplies of affordable
therapies.

Until last year India permitted the copying of patented drugs, which
allowed the country's pharmaceutical industry to sell cheap versions of
Aids drug cocktails, known as antiretrovirals. Legislation enacted in March
2005 curtails the ability of firms to make copycat treatments and allows
foreign pharmaceutical companies to claim ownership of drugs.

The California-based Gilead and Britain's GlaxoSmithKline, have now applied
for patents on two HIV treatments. Campaigners, lawyers and Indian drug
makers have opposed the applications, and more than 100 people were
arrested in protests yesterday in Delhi.

Activists say patents would drive up prices as Indian manufacturers would
have to pay royalties and rival generic versions would be blocked for 20
years.

Gilead has sought a patent on a key Aids treatment called tenofovir
(Viread), while Glaxo has sought one for a widely used drug called
Combivir. Lawyers say 8,000 patent applications are in the pipeline.

Exports by Indian companies helped to cut the price of antiretroviral
treatment from $15,000 (=A38,000) per patient per year a decade ago to $200=
.
Indian companies now provide two-thirds of the world's cheap Aids
therapies.

Campaigners say that as Aids patients develop a resistance to "first-line"
drugs, there will be no scope for a reduction in prices of
second-generation medicines without the Indian generic drugs. The
second-generation drugs are already 10 times more expensive than older
treatments.

"Granting [these patents] would set a dangerous precedent," said Ellen 't
Hoen, director of policy at Medecins sans Frontieres. "We will be back to
the days when multinationals controlled the price."

Drug companies say they sell to poor countries at cheap rates and that
problems with public health systems, rather than patents, curtails
accessibility.


+++++++++++++++++++++
Sheila Shettle
Communications Officer
M=E9decins Sans Fronti=E8res
Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines
Rue de Lausanne 78
1211 Geneva
Switzerland
+ 41.22.849.8403
sheila.shettle@geneva.msf.org
www.accessmed-msf.org