[Ip-health] Letter to Thai Ambassador from the UK's Stop AIDS Campaign

[Sarah Waldron]

This letter from the UK Stop AIDS Campaign was sent to the Thai
Ambassador to the UK

Ken Bluestone,
Chair, Stop AIDS Campaign,
The Grayston Centre,
28 Charles Square,
London, N1 6HT

His Excellency Mr Kitti Wasinondh,
Royal Thai Embassy,
Consular Section
29-30 Queen=92s Gate,
LONDON
SW7 5JB

1 June 2007

Your Excellency,

I am writing as Chair of the Stop AIDS Campaign, a coalition of over 80
NGOs and Trade Unions that works to raise awareness in the UK about the
global HIV/AIDS epidemic and to campaign for urgently scaled up
international action.

The Stop AIDS Campaign welcomes Thailand's ongoing commitment to
providing universal access  to HIV/AIDS treatment, and strongly supports
Thailand's recent use of compulsory licensing for three medicines,
including Abbott Laboratories' lopinavir/ritonavir.

Compulsory licensing is a vital tool in stimulating the effective
competitive market that is needed to bring rising drug prices down and
meet and sustain the promise of universal access to treatment. By
further expanding the market for generic products Thailand=92s move will
lead to price reductions for other countries. We hope it will also
encourage other countries to take similar measures. Yet Thailand's use
of compulsory licensing procedures has also highlighted the political
pressure faced by countries who seek to use their rights to put public
health before patent rights, and points to a major reason why so few
countries utilise their rights under TRIPS.

For these reasons we have been urging the UK government to provide an
explicit statement of support for Thailand's use of compulsory licensing
procedures. On 22 May our campaigning resulted in a statement from the
Department for International Development supporting =93Thailand's right to
use compulsory licensing provisions in order to protect public health,
and in particular, to promote access to medicines for all.=94  Please find
a full copy of the letter enclosed. We hope this will provide support to
both Thailand and other countries who may seek to use compulsory
licensing procedures.

We hope you find this statement is helpful. If so, we would be very
grateful if you could let us know, so that we can feed back to the UK
government.

Yours sincerely,

Ken Bluestone
Chair, Stop AIDS Campaign

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The letter from the UK government referred to can be viewed here:

http://peopleandplanet.org/fdl/treataidsnow/gt22maypage1.pdf
http://peopleandplanet.org/fdl/treataidsnow/gt22maypage2.pdf



--
Sarah Waldron
Campaigns Officer
People & Planet
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