[Ip-health] Reuters: Health ministers to debate drug patent dispute

[Thiru Balasubramaniam]

http://uk.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUKL1454849920080514

Health ministers to debate drug patent dispute
Wed May 14, 2008 3:33pm BST

By Laura MacInnis

GENEVA (Reuters) - Health ministers from around the world will try
next week to bridge differences over how to overhaul drug patent rules
that developing countries say make life-saving medicines costly and
inaccessible.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has struggled to find a way to
encourage the development of effective, affordable medical treatments
for parasites and tropical diseases that have long been overlooked by
the pharmaceutical industry.

A draft WHO plan proposed two years ago was rejected by both the
pharmaceutical sector and poor nations as inadequate, and failing to
balance competing claims for lower prices and incentives for
developing costly treatments.

An intergovernmental group convened to address those problems failed
earlier this month to agree on alternatives to the prevailing patent
system that gives companies the exclusive right to sell drugs they
develop over a fixed period of time.

WHO spokesman Bill Kean said health ministers attending the United
Nations agency's annual World Health Assembly would seek to iron out
the disagreements that have impeded progress in the intellectual
property field.

"Some of these (differences) we really do think will be sorted out
during the WHA," he told a news briefing in Geneva.

Development activists also see the May 19-24 meetings as a critical
moment for the drug access issue, which has also been taken up by the
World Trade Organization (WTO) in an agreement that makes allowances
for developing countries to create or buy copycat versions of patented
drugs.

The WTO's Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights or
"TRIPS" accord has been criticized as too limited to cope with the
problems poor countries face accessing medicines to fight HIV, malaria
and other diseases that kill, blind and disable millions of people
each year.

"It is now up to the World Health Assembly in May to translate bold
ideas into concrete action," Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without
Borders) said in a statement. "What we need to see is a wider, more
ambitious framework for R&D and political leadership, in particular
from WHO."

NEW MEDICINES

The United States and other rich nations have resisted a wholesale
reform of intellectual property rules, which offer companies a return
on their large investments into developing new drugs, and help protect
against counterfeits.

The International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and
Associations (IFPMA), whose members include Eli Lilly, Pfizer, Wyeth,
Novartis, Merck, AstraZeneca and Sanofi-Aventis, has called patent
protections key to health innovation.

Strong health care systems, efficient markets and adequate regulations
are also needed to ensure people get the treatments they need, IFPMA
Director Harvey Bale said in a statement.

"It is important to have a stable, enabling policy environment in each
of these areas to ensure a sustained flow of new medicines for the
benefit of patients worldwide," he said.

In addition to the patent question, delegates from the WHO's 193
member states will consider next week how the U.N. agency should
proceed in its efforts to confront the threat of pandemic flu,
eradicate polio and fight obesity and diabetes.

They will also examine the links between climate change and health,
assess progress in achieving U.N. goals on reducing child mortality
and malnutrition, and consider ways to work more effectively with
other international agencies, Kean said.

The WHO leads the development of global public health policy,
including issuing advisories on which vaccines people need for
international travel and guidance for countries coping with disease
outbreaks or other emergencies.

It also collaborates with financing bodies such as the Global Fund to
Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the GAVI Alliance and the Bill &
Melinda Gates Foundation to help improve standards of health care,
especially in poor parts of the world.

(Editing by Jonathan Lynn)

------------------------------------------------------------


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


Tel: +41 22 791 6727
Mobile: +41 76 508 0997