[Pharm-policy] Bangkok Post critical on drug company announcement

[James Love]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 13 May 2000 09:17:09 +0200
From: msfdrugs <msfdrugs@asianet.co.th>

The Bangkok Post responded with a very critical editorial to the
announcement by drug companies to reduce prices for HIV drugs.

Tido von Schoen-Angerer, MD
Medecins sans frontieres, Thailand
msfdrugs@asianet.co.th


Bangkok Post, May 13, 2000

http://www.bangkokpost.net/today/130500_News21.html

Editorial

Aids drug deal good but hardly enough

This week's announcement that a British pharmaceuticals giant is
reducing the cost of its AIDS treatment drugs sold only to the UN for
use in poor nations, is welcome. But it falls well short of what
agencies like Medecins Sans Frontieres was seeking -- affordable drugs
to save millions of lives in the Third World.

The announcement this week that five of the world's major pharmaceutical
companies will be reviewing downwards their prices of Aids-treating
drugs sold to the United Nations and its agencies, sounds excellent news
on the surface.

British pharmaceuticals giant Glaxo-Wellcome Plc cut the price of its
HIV combination therapy by 85% yesterday. The other four companies were
less committal but responded positively. Switzerland's Roche Holding SA
said it would cut prices and provide logistical support to developing
nations, while US firm Bristol-Myers Squibb said it would expand access
to its anti-retroviral drugs.

The United Nations said in Geneva that Merck and Co Inc and Germany's
Boehringer Ingelheim had also agreed to join the initiative, but the UN
failed to state to what extent.

The landmark announcement was, as expected, welcomed by agencies who
have long cried foul of the domineering tactics used by the
pharmaceutical industry and some governments who have supported them.
But David Nabarro, executive director of the World Health Organisation
in Geneva, may have been a little too optimistic by declaring at this
early stage that the deal "will give millions of the world's poorest
people access to life-saving drugs".

The cost of drugs to treat Aids currently exceeds 300,000 baht annually
per person. Glaxo says it was cutting its Combivir fixed-dose
combination therapy to the equivalent of 70 baht a day for developing
nations only if they were purchased by United Nations agencies.

Swiss Roche said it too was ready to offer developing countries
preferential rates under the UN deal. But Roche spokeswoman Jacqueline
Wallach said: "Exactly by how much the prices will be reduced and when,
is subject to negotiations."For the drugs firms, the deal is a shrewd
marketing move. The tide of anti-pharmaceutical sentiment has been
growing rapidly in the Western world as the giant companies post greater
profits yet retain ridiculous policies under the guise of the World
Trade Organisation's Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual
Property Rights (Trips).

In particular, United States pharmaceutical companies had argued that
poor countries' efforts to licence local manufacturers to make generic,
less expensive copies of Aids drugs violated their firms' patent
protection and compromised future research. These multi-nationals
garnered the support of the US government, whose officials had
threatened trade sanctions against countries that pursued such licences
for patented drugs-and still do. In welcoming the cheaper prices, US
Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky iterated yesterday that
countries must still strictly abide by the WTO's Trips agreement.

This flies in the face of the long-running campaign by Nobel Peace
Prize-winning international medical organisation Medecins Sans
Frontieres. This group has been pleading for years for poor nations to
be allowed to make generic drugs and vaccines not just for the treatment
of Aids but for many other life-threatening illnesses such as polio,
meningitis or pneumonia.

For the drug companies, it has been a great public relations exercise
which will have little effect on their profits. Africans could not
afford their drugs before, so their sales may increase. But the Aids
sufferers to benefit are not all those worldwide or even all those in
Third World countries as it should be, but only those pinpointed and
funded under a UN programme.

To suggest that "millions of the world's poorest people will now have
access to life-saving drugs" is therefore, not quite correct. The facts
will prove that a few more of the world's poor may get into a UN-funded
Aids drug treatment programme, but millions of treatable people will
still die from the virus.