[Ip-health] Editorial from Ghana on IGWG: The poor stand to lose from anti-patent crusades

[Malini Aisola]

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The poor stand to lose from anti-patent crusades

Should poor governments be allowed to break drug patents for
humanitarian reasons? That question is front-and-center at a major
public health conference sponsored by the World Health Organization that
started on 28 April in Geneva.

By Franklin Cudjoe
Wednesday 30 April 2008

http://en.afrik.com/article13423.html


Top-notch policy experts from around the world have gathered to make
formal policy recommendations about patents to Third World governments
struggling with disease. Many will claim that patents allow Western drug
companies to keep drug prices artificially high, and that
patent-breaking is a cheap and easy way to get poor patients the drugs
they need. They're wrong on both counts.

For starters, the drugs needed in the developing world aren't patent
protected. A 2004 study published in the journal Health Affairs showed
that less than 2 percent of the 319 prescription drugs on the WHO's
Model List of Essential Medicines are actually under patent.

What patients in the Third World need aren't patent-busting bureaucrats,
but more roads, doctors, hospitals, nutritious food, and good
sanitation. When roads are in disrepair, it can be particularly
difficult to reach rural populations, where disease burden is highest.
In places with no electricity, temperature-sensitive pills often go bad
before anyone can benefit from them. Refrigerated Coca-Cola vans have
been shipping polio vaccines to the hinterlands of Cameroon, because
most roads are unmotorable. Even if roads were available and medicines
were donated, they must be prescribed by qualified medical staff.

Patients will also need good drinking water and a good meal to enhance
recovery from disease. However, the doctor-patient ratio is abysmally
low and close to 60 percent of Africans do not have access to good
sanitation and many subsist on less than a dollar a day.

Patents are actually a critical part of the solution. They protect the
financial incentives that drive pharmaceutical companies to create
innovative medications in the first place. It takes an average of US$800
million and 10-15 years to bring a new drug to the market. Patents
ensure that pharmaceutical companies can recoup that enormous investment.

If countries start breaking patents, though, firms lose out on sales.
And they're less able to finance the development of new cures. That's a
blow to the public health efforts of all countries, rich and poor.
Ghana's health Minister told me that he fails to see how people could
hold antagonistic positions against pharmaceutical companies, because in
his own words "if drugs are being made, then people must be sick
somewhere-it is not for charity".

Poor patent enforcement also gives rise to potentially harmful copycats.
The generic pharmaceuticals manufactured in the developing world often
don't comply with international safety regulations. Low-quality and
counterfeit drugs are common. The WHO estimates that 10 percent of the
world's drugs are counterfeit. Patent-theft is making the problem worse.

It's also important to realize that drug companies are not as blindly
self-serving as many anti-patent groups portray them to be. Global
pharmaceutical companies have worked for years with groups like the WHO
and the UN Children's Fund to lead the fight against HIV/AIDS, malaria,
tuberculosis, and other diseases plaguing the developing world.

Just a few months ago, Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline, and Merck donated $450
million in medicines to Burkina Faso, one of the poorest countries in
the world. These sorts of philanthropic efforts are less likely if drug
companies start struggling just to break even.

Many important steps need to be to taken to improve medical care in the
Third World. Despite what the health activists are saying, stealing drug
patents and stifling the creation of life-saving medicines is not one of
them. It seems that a sensible route to take would be dialogue with
pharmaceutical companies for differential pricing for developing world
markets while making every effort to improve the well being of citizens.

Open, decentralized and transparent government, lower trade tariffs,
free speech, the rule of law, relaxed business entry and exit rules,
property rights, and freedom to contract and freedom from contract would
be important to help poor citizens buy their own health insurance
against diseases.

Franklin Cudjoe is executive director of IMANI Center for Policy and
Education, a think-tank located in Accra, Ghana. He spoke at the IGWG
conference in Geneva on 28-29 April, 2008.

IMANI's website: http://www.imanighana.com/about.html)

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Malini Aisola

Knowledge Ecology International

1621 Connecticut Ave., NW, Washington, DC 20009 USA

Tel.:  +1.202.332.2670 Fax: +1.202.332.2673