[Ip-health] Financial Times: Call for action on HIV drug patents

[Thiru Balasubramaniam]

Call for action on HIV drug patents

By Andrew Jack

Published: July 14 2009 03:00 | Last updated: July 14 2009 03:00

Pharmaceutical companies should grant rival manufacturers the right to
produce their HIV medicines, a group of MPs will recommend today.

They should also publish independent audits of their efforts to
increase access to treatment as demand surges in the developing world,
the MPs will say.

New efforts by companies as well as government donors will be needed
to provide better access to more expensive HIV antiretroviral
medicines required by more patients in the future, says the report by
the all-party parliamentary group on Aids.

"We are sitting on a treatment time bomb. We must reduce the price of
second-line medicines and less toxic first-line medicines before
millions need them. We cannot sleepwalk into a situation where we can
only afford to treat a tiny proportion of those infected," David
Borrow, who chaired the group, said.

The report estimates that the number of people needing HIV drugs
globally by 2030 will be 55m, compared with 4m today. The figure could
be higher if treatment guidelines change.

It endorses a "patent pool" currently under discussion between several
drug companies and Unitaid, the French-led international treatment
funding agency, whereby manufacturers would agree to allow low-cost
generic producers to make their patented products in exchange for a
modest royalty.

GlaxoSmithKline, the UK pharmaceutical group, has supported a pool to
provide access to its experimental compounds to outside researchers
studying treatments for "neglected" tropical diseases. But the company
has so far ruled out doing this for its existing HIV medicines.

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


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