[Ip-health] Interview with Thai Health Minister on CLs

[Benjamin Krohmal]

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http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2007/2/19/worldupdates/
2007-02-19t014311z_01_nootr_rtrjonc_0_india-288239-1&sec=worldupdates

Reuters
February 19, 2007

INTERVIEW - Thailand fed up with high drug prices - minister
By Darren Schuettler

BANGKOK (Reuters) - Thailand will likely override international
patents on more drugs, including those for cancer and heart disease,
if pharmaceutical giants do not significantly cut their prices, the
country's health minister says.

"We have thought about this for more than five years. It's long
enough," said Mongkol na Songkhla, who is leading one of the biggest
challenges to Big Pharma's patent rights in years.

Thai Minister of Public Health Mongkol Na Songkhla talks on his
mobile phone during interview at the Ministry of Public Health in
Bangkok February 16, 2007. (REUTERS/Chaiwat Subprasom)
He said price talks with major drug firms had become "easier" since
Bangkok issued compulsory licences allowing generic drug production
on two HIV/AIDS drugs and a medicine for heart disease, the first
time a developing nation has done so for such a treatment.

"If they reduce their drug price to our satisfaction, there is no
need to make a compulsory licence," Mongkol said in an interview.

But he said it was too late for drug giant Merck, which had a licence
issued against its HIV/AIDS drug Efavirenz in November, and last week
slashed the price in Thailand by nearly half to 700 baht per patient
per month.

"If they had reduced the price before we announced the CL, it would
have been more helpful. Why did they wait until we did something?" he
said, adding that the licence would stay in force.

The first 16,000 bottles of generic Efavirenz from Indian drug maker
Ranbaxy Laboratories, part of a contract for 66,000 bottles, arrived
in Thailand this month, he said.

Although legal under world trade rules, the licences, which allow
Thailand's military-appointed government to make or buy copycat
versions of medicines needed for public health measures, stunned the
drug makers who received no prior warning.

"This action is completely unprecedented anywhere in the world," an
industry lobby group representing 38 foreign drug makers in Thailand
said last week, adding that it believed another 11 drugs would be
targeted.

Mongkol did not give a number, but he said other "essential
medicines" to fight cancer, heart disease and other leading causes of
death in Thailand were being studied.

"I HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE"

Most of Thailand's 63 million people cannot afford patented drugs, he
said, and the licences issued so far are expected to save the
government up to $24 million a year.

"We have to provide health services to 49 million people and with
limited resources. Reaching the neglected poor is our main concern,"
said Mongkol, a senior Health Ministry bureaucrat who was appointed
minister after last September's military coup ousted pro-business
Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra.

Mongkol, whose views on public health were forged while he served as
a young doctor riding a horse to remote villages in Thailand's poor
northeast, said the coup had presented an opportunity to act after a
year of failed price negotiations.

"The true politician will not do this. They are afraid of some
consequences," he said. "But I am not a politician and I have nothing
to lose."

While he has faced strong criticism outside of the country -- the
Wall Street Journal wrote an editorial last week on what it called
the "Theft in Thailand" -- at home Mongkol's ministry scored the
highest in a poll on the government's performance.

Mongkol said he did not believe major drug firms would go through
with a threat to withhold new medicines if Thailand issued more
licences. He also rejected industry arguments that high prices are
necessary because drug companies need to invest heavily in research
and develop new medicines.

"R&D does not cost them so much, but they do a lot of marketing," he
said, referring to one of his favourite books, The Truth About the
Drug Companies, whose author argues the industry is a "vast marketing
machine" that "lives off of government-funded research and monopoly
rights".

Benjamin Krohmal
Coordinator - Project on Medical Innovation
Knowledge Ecology International
Tel: +1-202-332-2670 ex. 14
Fax: +1-202-332-2673
ben.krohmal@keionline.org