[Ip-health] posting - HIV patent pool - drug firms want India, China excluded

[Leena Menghaney]

HIV patent pool hobbles as drug firms want India, China excluded
DNA-Daily News & Analysis 09.12.09
Priyanka Golikeri

MNCs stand to gain in countries where product patents are in vogue.

Efforts to bring together nine global drugmakers to pool their HIV patents
in order to make available treatment to millions living with HIV/AIDS in the
developing world seem to have faltered over a crucial issue - the inclusion
of middle income countries such as India and China in the list of
beneficiaries.

As reported by DNA Money on October 3, international humanitarian aid
organisation Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) had launched a campaign calling
on drugmakers such as GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, Gilead
Sciences,Pfizer, Merck, Abbott, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Sequoia Pharma, and
Boehringer-Ingelheim to join the patent pool of UNITAID, an international
drug purchasing agency.

The idea was to create a mechanism whereby patents held by these companies
could be pooled and made available to others for production, thus speeding
up delivery of generic drugs for treatment of HIV/AIDS, as they could get
produced well before the patent term expiry.

About 18 medicines were to be pooled, including atazanavir,
abacavir,darunavir, lopinavir and nevirapine. In turn, the patent holders
were to receive royalty from those using their patents.

The basic principle behind the pool was to include all developing countries,
without discrimination.

But now, according to people in the know, several drugmakers are opposing
the inclusion of middle income countries such as India, China,
Thailand,Philippines, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Peru and South Africa, and
want access to the pool limited only to the least developed countries.

According to a patent and healthcare expert tracking the pool, the UNITAID
executive board, which is to meet next week, is planning to introduce an
opt-out clause, which would give drugmakers the option of excluding middle
income countries from the pool.

"If these clauses and demands are accepted, then patients in middle income
countries will not be able to access cheap generic versions of patented HIV
drugs," says the patent and healthcare expert.

Says Leena Menghaney, project manager-India, MSF's campaign for access to
essential medicines, "If middle income countries are excluded, then the
basic principle of the pool would stand defeated."

"Middle income countries are where access to and scaling up of AIDS
treatment has suffered as domestic generic production or importation of
generics is seriously affected by the product patent regime," says
Menghaney.

Middle income countries introduced the product patent regime by 2005, while
the deadline for the LDCs to introduce the regime is 2016.

Thailand is one of the first middle income countries to have protested the
exclusion, with Thai civil society groups sending a letter to the UNITAID
executive board saying that bowing to the demands of the MNCs to decide
which countries will benefit from the pool would amount to UNITAID turning
its back on millions of people who are in desperate need of the medicines.

According to a report by the World Health Organisation, UNAIDS, and Unicef,
over 4 million people in low and middle income countries were receiving
antiretroviral therapy at the close of 2008. However, at least 5 million
more still do not have access to treatment.

Link to story:
http://www.dnaindia.com/money/report_hiv-patent-pool-hobbles-as-drug-firms-w
ant-india-china-excluded_1321644

*************
Leena Menghaney
Campaign Co-ordinator (India)
Medecins Sans Frontieres
Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines
New Delhi