[Ip-health] Oxfam and MSF letters to the editor in the IHT: Drugs for developing countries

[Thiru Balasubramaniam]

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/03/opinion/edlet.php

Drugs for developing countries

Oxfam is not, as Benedetto Della Vedova incorrectly asserts in his
article "Patents are the wrong target" (Views, May 28), seeking to
"scrap" the patent system.

Patents often lead to high prices for medicines in developing
countries, yet developing countries can use the intellectual property
system to address these concerns.

In 2001, all countries agreed to the Doha Declaration on Trade Related
Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, which stated that
intellectual property rules do not and should not prevent countries
from taking measures to protect public health.

Nevertheless, multinational pharmaceutical companies and rich
countries have lobbied at times to discourage developing countries
from using legal rules to ensure poor people have access to affordable
medicines.

All countries must identify additional ways to ensure that
pharmaceutical innovation works for poor countries. Stricter patent
protection in developing countries will not lead to innovation that
benefits the poor. The World Health Organization has declared that
there is little to no evidence that patent rules boost research and
development for medicines that address diseases that predominantly
affect poor people.

They are not an attractive market for the pharmaceutical industry, so
the medicines they need will not be provided under this system.

Even greater efforts than those few examples cited by Vedova will be
required to overcome these critical gaps.

Bernice Romero, Washington Campaigns director Oxfam International

Benedetto Della Vedova argues that the World Health Assembly (WHA)
should advance policies that are based on evidence when it comes to
increasing access to essential medicines for people in developing
countries. We could not agree more.

In 2003, the WHA created a commission that was tasked to look into
ways to improve the current pharmaceutical research and development
system so that desperately needed medical innovation takes place, and
patients can access the fruit of this innovation.

Three years later, the commission concluded that the current patent
system fails to deliver on both these points, and that there is no
evidence stronger patent protection in developing countries will help.

These findings form the basis for the new WHO Strategy on Public
Health, Innovation and Intellectual Property, which governments agreed
to at the recent WHA meeting.

Every day, medical staff members of M=E9decins Sans Fronti=E8res (MSF)
witness first hand the failures of a market-driven pharmaceutical
system, which caters to those who can pay large sums for their drugs,
but leaves those who can't out in the dark. Tuberculosis is the poster
child for these failures, where the newest drugs available were
developed in the 1960s, and the most-commonly-used method to diagnose
this curable disease - which continues to kill 1.7 million people each
year - was developed nearly 130 years ago.

Changing the rules of the game will mean separating the cost of
research and development from the price of products. MSF, other NGOs
and some pharmaceutical companies have made proposals to improve the
situation. We could establish prizes, a fund for neglected diseases,
patent pools and not-for-profit drug development organizations. But
Della Vedova's proposal to award innovation by giving marketing
monopolies using the Orphan Drug Act - which allows the company to
charge high prices - is absurd. How is increasing the price of new
medicines for neglected diseases going to help the people that cannot
afford to pay?

Ellen 't Hoen, Paris Policy and Advocacy director Campaign for Access
to Essential Medicines M=E9decins Sans Fronti=E8res

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


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