[Ip-health] IPS: US Pharma Giant Faces Public Boycott

[Thiru Balasubramaniam]

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=3D37012

HEALTH-THAILAND:
US Pharma Giant Faces Public Boycott
Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Mar 21 (IPS) - A broad coalition of Thai non-governmental
organisations (NGOs) is threatening to tap the spirit of nationalism,
which runs deep and wide here, in a showdown with a Chicago-based
pharmaceutical giant. The need for access to cheaper life-saving drugs
has sparked this row.

The street outside the Thailand office of Abbott Laboratories in a
popular shopping area in downtown Bangkok is poised to become one of
the many battlegrounds in this imminent clash. Other sites the NGOs
have in mind are shops that sell Abbott products, advertising agencies
and Thai customers.

=91'Abbott does not care about Thai people. We call on Thai people to
boycott all Abbott products,'' Saree Aongsomwang, manager of the
Foundation for Consumers, said this week. =91'We have to stand up to
Abbott.''

Her call was echoed by Rosana Tositrakul, a member of the Thai Holistic
Health Foundation, who compared support for Abbott as equal to
=91'supporting a fox in a chicken coop.'' =91'Thai consumers must get
together and boycott Abbott, because it is an effective tool,'' she
said. =91'This resistance from small people will continue until Abbott
changes its policies. This action will be an awakening of Thai
people.''

The show of defiance directed at Abbott has grown since the pharma
giant declared last week that it would not be marketing new drugs to
Thailand as a protest against a decision by Bangkok's
military-appointed government to invoke a clause in the global trading
rules. In January, health minister Mongkol na Songkhla confirmed that
Thailand had used the =91compulsory license' option recognised by the
World Trade Organisation (WTO) to break the patent on =91Kaletra', an
anti-retroviral (ARV) drug produced by Abbott.

Abbott's announcement on Mar. 14 that it will not register seven new
drugs in Thailand include a new ARV pill conducive to tropical climates
in addition to an antibiotic, a painkiller and drugs for kidney disease
and blood clots. The multinational has defended its move by seeking
recourse in a familiar argument: that breaking patents the Thai way
will undermine the efforts by pharmaceutical companies to invest in
research and development for new drugs.

But the lesson Abbott hopes to teach Thailand for placing the lives of
its patients over corporate profits is destined to become a public
relations fiasco, in addition to global outrage against the
questionable practices of a pharmaceutical giant, asserts Medecins Sans
Frontieres (MSF - or Doctors Without Borders), the international relief
agency in the vanguard of an international campaign for access to
cheaper drugs.

=91'It is the first time that a pharmaceutical company has gone so far. I
don't see what they are trying to achieve through these threats,'' Paul
Cawthorn, from MSF's Bangkok office, told IPS. =91'What they have done is
very petty and appalling. It will reflect badly on multinational
companies.''

Abbott's decision has =91'raised the ante'' in the campaign for cheaper
drugs in the developing world to =91'a new level,'' he added. =91'We are
talking about essential, life saving medicines. This issue is not going
to go away, because access to drugs has become a critical issue.''

In fact, the position taken by Thai authorities to justify the use of
the WTO-approved compulsory license, in the case of public health
emergencies, is revealing. =91'The Thai ministry of public health views
these decisions on the government use of patents as a form of social
movement that aims at improving access to essential medicines and the
health of the people,'' minister Mongkol wrote in a preface to a book
on Thailand's position towards compulsory license: =91'The public health
interest is thus the main and final goal of this social movement.''

The Thai health ministry believes in =91'a moderate and public interest
oriented approach to implement the intellectual property right,'' added
the 96-page book, which was released this month in Geneva where the
World Health Organisation (WHO) is based. =91'We are convinced and
committed to the view that Public Health interest and the life of the
people must come before commercial interest.''

Abbott has also to contend with the lack of support from two other
pharmaceutical giants who have been equally affected by Bangkok's
invoking the compulsory license option to break their respective
patent-protected drugs. Neither the pharma giant Sanofi-Aventis, which
produces Palvix, a drug for heart patients, nor Merck, which produces
Efavirenz, a life-prolonging drug for HIV patients, has turned on
Thailand the way Abbott has.

Merck was the first to be hit by the new public health policy of this
South-east Asian nation in November last year, followed by Abbott and
Sanofi-Aventis in January. The right of a developing country to issue a
compulsory license, to break a patent-protected drug and produce a
cheaper generic version locally, was one of two provisions that were
approved during the WTO ministerial meeting in Doha, Qatar, in 2001.
The other was to enable developing countries faced with public health
emergencies the right to break patents by importing cheaper copycat
versions.

Thai activists who are gearing up to mount the boycott of Abbott
products here say that studies justify Bangkok's decision to break the
patents on expensive anti-AIDS drugs desperately in need. According to
official reports, the public health budget for ARVs has increased from
10 million US dollars in 2001 to over 100 million dollars this year.
And even that figure will only buy drugs for the 82,000 patients out of
the country's 500,000 infected.

=91'The ministry of health must stand firm on its decision,'' says Nimitr
Tien-udom, head of AIDS Access, an NGO working to secure cheaper drugs
for people with HIV. =91'If you are using Abbott's products just stop.
The company's tactic is to monopolise patients in the market.''
(END/2007)


---------------------------------
Thiru Balasubramaniam
Geneva Representative
Knowledge Ecology International (KEI)
voice +41.22.791.6727
fax +41.22.723.2988
mobile +41 76 508 0997
thiru@keionline.org