[Ip-health] Livemint India: Draft WHO pact on drugs cheered by India

[Thiru Balasubramaniam]

http://www.livemint.com/2008/06/01232744/Draft-WHO-pact-on-drugs-cheere.htm=
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Draft WHO pact on drugs cheered by India

Even though the draft is not binding on all nations, experts say it
has set common ground for action

Draft WHO pact on drugs cheered by India
Even though the draft is not binding on all nations, experts say it
has set common ground for action
Bhuma Shrivastava

New Delhi: For the first time ever, a consensus has evolved on
creating global patent databases, monitoring drug prices and
encouraging companies to differentially price their drugs, as a
burgeoning health care bill pushes governments towards sourcing
cheaper medicines.

The initiative, part of a draft agreement adopted by all the countries
in the World Health Assembly in Geneva recently, has been cheered by
public health advocates and makers of generic or off-patent drugs. The
assembly is an apex group of member nations at the World Health
Organization or WHO.

Even though the draft is not binding on all nations, sector experts
say it is a conceptual breakthrough as it has set a common ground for
action and vindicated public health measures supported by developing
countries such as India.

=93All the member nations of WHO have endorsed this position. It is a
big victory for public health activists and the Indian government,"
said a senior official at the Union ministry of health and family
welfare who was closely associated with the negotiations in Geneva.
While =93the draft doesn't have the force of law=94, added the official,
it is significant on grounds of =93moral suasion=94. These provisions were
objected to by the US but finally found their way into the consensus
draft, signifying a softened stance by one of the strongest champions
of patents and intellectual property, which have come in the way of
widespread adoption of generic drugs.

The draft notes the need for =93compiling, maintaining and updating user-
friendly global databases which contain public information on the
administrative status of health-related patents=94 and strengthening
=93national capacities for analysis of the information=94 in these
databases.

The Indian government wanted WHO to be the lead agency in developing
such a centralized database, said the ministry official, but that was
not agreed to by other nations that are proposing that other agencies
such as the World Trade Organization or the World Intellectual
Property Organization play that role.

Such an information tank, said Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance=92s
secretary general D.G. Shah, would aid governments and drug
procurement bodies such as M=E9decins Sans Fronti=E8res in identifying if
the drugs are patent protected in a certain country or not.

Although multinational drug makers, who typically invest billions of
dollars in research and development, only secure patents in 50-60
countries, once a drug is known to be patented, the belief goes around
that it is so worldwide, giving companies =93de-facto patent protection
even in countries where they have not incurred the patent filing
expenses=94, he said. =93A database will lift the veil on such cases.=94 Th=
e
Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance is a trade lobby representing Indian
generic drug makers.

The health assembly has, in its draft, also asked member nations to
=93encourage pharmaceutical companies and other health-related
industries to consider policies, including differential pricing=94 to
promote availability of affordable drugs and consider =93development of
policies to monitor (drug) pricing=94. Differential pricing is a
practice used by patent-holding drug makers to sell their new,
expensive drugs at a price that is affordable to needy patients.

Novartis India Ltd's managing director Ranjit Shahani, who was the
president of Organisation of Pharmaceutical Producers of India, a
lobby of foreign-owned drug makers in India, called differential
pricing =93directionally positive=94 and ones that recognize people's
varying paying capacity, though the implementation should be through a
workable model.

Merck Inc.=91s MSD Pharmaceuticals Pvt Ltd. has already introduced its
diabetes drug Januvia in India at a fifth of its US prices while
GlaxoSmithKline Plc. is also in the process of introducing cancer
drug, Tykerb at a discount in India. Others could follow.

The clause for =93drug monitoring=94 has failed to impress the drug access
campaigners. =93Monitoring prices is a good step but controlling prices
would have been a better and stronger one,=94 said Kajal Bharadwaj, a
lawyer specializing in drug access-related patent issues and added
that the health assembly text =93legitimizes and validates the public
health hedges in government policies that countries like India,
Thailand and Brazil have been sticking up for=94.


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Thiru Balasubramaniam
Geneva Representative
Knowledge Ecology International (KEI)
thiru@keionline.org


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