[Pharm-policy] Criticism of big 5 initiative from Kenya

[James Love]

A little more on the Kenya situation.  This article quotes Chris Ouma,
Dr Sophie-Marie Scouflaire and others.  
http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,393651,00.html

Slashed drug costs
'will not touch
Kenya's Aids crisis' 

Pandemic costs its economy
£1.8m a day 

James Astill in Nairobi 
Tuesday November 7, 2000 

A proposal by the world's leading
pharmaceutical companies to slash the
cost of Aids drugs in Kenya is "cynical
and hypocritical", the chairman of the
country's Aids control council said
yesterday. 

  [snip]

"If the international mafia - the drug
companies - really mean business, they
should waive their patent rights and let
developing countries make the drugs
themselves under their supervision. Kenya
already has the capacity to make most of
these drugs. It is the big five who are
stopping us." 

  [snip]

In January Kenya must agree to extend
its patent protection from the seven years
stipulated in British colonial law to the
WTO's 20 years, sealing the western
pharmaceutical companies exclusive
rights to anti-retroviral treatments for
several generations of Aids patients. 

Dr Sophie-Marie Scouflaire, head of the
Access to Essential Medicines campaign
for Médecins sans Frontières (MSF),
agreed that price cuts were not the
answer. 

"Price reductions are just a tool of the
multinationals to try to stop Africa
producing its own drugs," she said. 

"We want to see patent law change
entirely, to see all drugs produced locally
or imported from cheaper producers,
currently outside patent law. A Kenyan
drug company has offered to start making
anti-retrovirals for us for free, but our
hands are tied by the WTO." 

MSF estimates that an annual course of
anti-retrovirals could be produced in Brazil
or Thailand for $200 (£140). 


"Extraordinary means call for
extraordinary measures," Dr Abdullah
said. "We must [re-examine] the whole
patenting issue. If the disease continues
unchecked it will be like exploding a
neutron bomb in our country. There will be
buildings but there will be no human
beings." 


-- 
James Love  <love@cptech.org>  http://www.cptech.org
Consumer Project on Technology, P.O. Box 19367, Washington, DC 200036
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