[Ip-health] NGOs slam move to keep India out of patent pool

[Gopa Kumar]

--
[ Picked text/plain from multipart/alternative ]
  NGOs slam move to keep India out of patent pool  BS Reporter / New
Delhi December 13, 2009, 0:31 IST

Indian civil society organisations have opposed a reported move by global
drug procurement agency UNITAID to exclude countries such as China, Brazil
and India from a proposed patent pool for AIDS drugs.

UNITAID is an international facility hosted by the World Health Organisatio=
n
(WHO), Geneva, for buying drugs against HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis
to be used in poor countries.

The move will be a major blow to the ability of Indian industry to make
low-cost versions of patented medicines and will push prices of future AIDS
medicines, these groups have alleged.

In a statement last week, Philippe Douste-Blazy, chair, UNITAID, said the
patent pool plan was meant to scale up access to medicines in developing
countries.

The opposition has come on the eve of a crucial UNITAID Board meeting (on
December 14 & 15) to approve a plan for implementing the patent pool
proposal. The need for such a patent pool was highlighted by the WHO as a
means to ensure supply of AIDS medicines to the developing world.

Patent pool essentially means a voluntary decision by patent holders or
global drug majors to forgo their patent rights in select countries. Generi=
c
companies will be allowed to make medicines in those countries after paying
a mutually agreed licence fee.

It was alleged that drug majors had informed UNITAID that they could
contribute to the patent pool only on a selective basis and thereby prevent
over 100 middle income countries such as India, Brazil and China from
accessing rights to manufacture generic versions of these medicines.

The groups say the patent pool will turn meaningless if only poor countries
are included in the list as none of them have the capability to manufacture
these medicines.

In a joint appeal, seven civil society groups, including the National
Working Group on Patent Laws, the Centre for Trade and Development, the All
India Peoples Science Network, complained that UNITAID had refused to share
the patent pool implementation plan with them. According to them, the
concept of patent pool, as conceived by the agency, undermined the
importance of =93compulsory licensing=94 that was allowed under the Trade
Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement.

In a separate mail, Public Health Movement, the global network of grassroot
health NGOs, said the pool, if adopted in the current form, would create
more barriers than ease access to affordable medicines

=93The plan will be discussed for approval at UNITAID=92s Executive Board
meeting on December 14. In developing the plan, UNITAID has consulted with =
a
variety of stakeholders, spanning from communities living with the disease
to public health and intellectual property experts and pharmaceutical
companies=94, Douste-Blazy said.

=93In keeping with UNITAID=92s constitution, the patent pool in no way a me=
ans
to replace or override other provisions contained in the Trade Related
Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement or the Doha
Declaration on TRIPS and Public Health. The patent pool represents an
additional tool to increase access to HIV treatment, and an opportunity for
patent holders to voluntarily contribute to the attainment of crucial
health-related goals endorsed by the international community=94 he added.