[Ip-health] Brazil Decides to Held Hostage No More

[robert weissman]

May 4, 2007, For Immediate Release

For more information: Robert Weissman, 202-387-8030

BRAZIL DECIDES TO BE HELD HOSTAGE NO MORE:
STATEMENT IN RESPONSE TO BRAZIL'S ISSUANCE OF A COMPULSORY LICENSE ON
EFAVIRENZ

The following is a statement of Robert Weissman, director, Essential Action:

Developing country governments must decide whether to let themselves and
their people be held hostage by brand-name companies holding patent
monopolies -- monopolies granted by the governments themselves -- or to
act to make important medicines affordable and available to their people.

Today, in announcing a compulsory license on the important HIV/AIDS
product efavirenz, Brazil finally decided it no longer wants to be held
hostage.

Congratulations are due to Brazil, and especially to the Brazilian
activists and public health advocates who have long toiled for this day.

Brazil's initiative is a crucial step to help the country maintain its
effective program to treat people with HIV/AIDS, the viability of which
is threatened by high brand-name prices for second-generation drugs.

It will also have major beneficial externalities. Brazil's substantial
market will help create economies of scale for generic makers of
efavirenz, and  -- combined with the generic market created by
Thailand's issuance of a compulsory license on efavirenz late last year
-- will drive down generic prices on a global basis.

Following the breakthrough initiatives of Thailand late last year and
earlier this year, Brazil's action will also help demonstrate the
viability and importance of compulsory licensing.

It is time for developing countries to exercise much more aggressively
the flexibilities they have fought to maintain in international trade
rules, and not just for HIV/AIDS drugs. The only sustainable way to
drive down prices is through generic competition.

Although they have grudgingly conceded some ground in the terrain of
HIV/AIDS, Big Pharma's preference is to maintain a single global price
for its medicines. That means, plain and simple, that most people in the
world -- and the vast majority in the developing world -- cannot afford
brand-name products. Every person should view that as intolerable.

Countries cannot easily overcome the problems of poverty, but they can
easily address the problem of artificially high drug prices maintained
by patent monopolies. Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Zambia, Malawi,
Ghana, Eritrea, Mozambique, South Africa and others -- and now Brazil --
have shown the way.