[Ip-health] IPS: WHO chief's stand on generic drugs slammed

[Thiru Balasubramaniam]

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=36420

Bangkok, 2 Feb (IPS/Marwaan Macan-Markar) -- Civil society and
humanitarian
groups slammed the new head of the World Health Organisation (WHO), on
the
sidelines of a meeting here, after she appeared to favour the interests
of
pharmaceutical giants over the plight of the sick and the poor in the
developing
world.

''It is not the role of the WHO to protect the interests of the
pharmaceutical
companies,'' Dr. Ellen t'Hoen of the international humanitarian agency
Doctors
Without Borders (or MSF for Medecins Sans Frontieres) said at a press
conference, Friday. ''It is a reason for concern that the WHO takes a
more
conservative role than the WTO (World Trade Organisation).''

''The new DG (director general) of the WHO should have stood up for the
poor,''
added James Love, head of Knowledge Ecology International, a Washington
DC-based group lobbying for cheaper generic drugs. ''This is a bad
start. She needs
to educate herself about intellectual property rights.''

A Thai AIDS rights activist was as critical. ''The WHO has to look more
closely at
its role in the global public health campaign. It must be able to stand
up to the
threats of big pharmaceutical companies,'' said Nimit Tienudom,
director of AIDS
Access Foundation, a Bangkok-based non-governmental organisation (NGO)
campaigning for cheaper anti-AIDS drugs.

The rebukes were in response to comments made Thursday by Dr. Margaret
Chan
who was appointed to head the global health agency in November last
year. On
two occasions, say her critics, she failed to express her support for
developing
countries fighting for cheaper alternatives to expensive branded drugs.
What she
eventually said should embolden the pharmaceutical industry, they add.

The most troubling for champions of cheaper alternative drugs were the
comments
made by Chan when she visited Thailand's National Health Security Office
(NHSO), where she cautioned against hasty embrace of countries
resorting to
'compulsory licencing' to secure cheaper generic drugs.

''I'd like to underline that we have to find a right balance for
compulsory licencing.
We can't be naive about this. There is no perfect solution for
accessing drugs in
both quality and quantity,'' Chan is quoted as having said at the NHSO,
according
to Friday's 'Bangkok Post' newspaper.

Earlier in the day, Chan praised the pharmaceutical industry lavishly
during a
keynote address delivered at the opening of a two-day international
conference that
focused on ways to improve access to essential health technologies for
neglected
diseases. The event, hosted by a local university, attracted over 300
participants
from the developing and developed world.

The stance taken by Chan comes at a pivotal moment in Thailand's quest
to
provide cheaper generic drugs to the country's poor. On Monday, the
military-appointed government gave the nod to issue compulsory licences
to
secure two drugs, one for HIV/AIDS, and the other for heart disease.
That move
triggered a round of protest from the pharmaceutical industry and from
sections of
the international media more sympathetic to corporate financial agendas.

This was the third drug in as many months that Bangkok had felt a need
to break
the patent held by a pharmaceutical company by issuing a compulsory
licence,
which is a provision recognised at a WTO ministerial meeting in 2001.
Under this
option that is part of the trade-related intellectual property rights
(TRIPS)
agreement, countries can issue a compulsory licence to secure cheaper
generic
drugs to meet a public health emergency.

Thai AIDS and public health activists had been hoping that Chan's
presence in
Bangkok would boost the government's move to supply cheaper drugs for
the
country's 80,000 people with HIV who need anti-AIDS medication out of
over
600,000 who have the killer disease.

Chan's comments have broader implications, too, since they come at a
time when
the Geneva-based health agency is under increasing scrutiny by NGOs and
public
health advocates. The latter fear that the WHO is selling out to the
pharmaceutical
industry given the pressure imposed on it by the US government.

Few events illustrate this climate better than the way William Aldis,
the WHO
representative in Thailand, was forced to quit his Bangkok mission
after writing a
commentary in the 'Bangkok Post' newspaper in January 2006, where he
supported
Thailand's move to secure alternatives to expensive brand-name drugs.

It was an event not lost on US Congressman Jim McDermott. In a speech
to the
House of Representatives in June 2006, McDermott drew attention to the
US
government's role in Aldis' removal, saying, ''They put him elsewhere -
in a
position where he would have no power similar to what he had before.''

Washington also took the WHO to task last year for co-sponsoring a
publication
that was critical of US trade polices. The study looked at the options
available for
developing countries to use the flexibility available under the TRIPS
agreement to
gain access to cheaper medicines.

''(This publication) spuriously characterises the trade policy of the
United States as
a threat to public health, and makes unnecessarily inflammatory and
prejudicial
recommendations as to how the United States can improve its trade
policies,''
wrote William Steiger, a senior official at the US department of health
and human
services, in an August 2006 letter to the acting director general of
the WHO.

What troubles civil society campaigners like Martin Khor, director of
Third World
Network, a Penang-based NGO, is the reluctance of the WHO to defend its
position. ''It is not normal for the WHO to be silent on this issue of
developing
countries using TRIPS flexibility to get cheaper drugs,'' he told IPS.

The current tendency of the WHO to cave into such pressure goes against
the past
record of the organisation as a leading advocate for developing
countries to tap the
special provisions in TRIPS, he added. ''The WHO should be encouraging
countries to fully exploit TRIPS flexibility for the benefit of public
health.

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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