Panos News Release - Access to Essential Drugs
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ACCESS TO ESSENTIAL DRUGS MAY BE UNDERMINED BY GLOBAL PATENT
AGREEMENT
December 1 World AIDS Day
A third of the world's population still has no access to essential
drugs. In the poorest countries of Africa and Asia this figure rises
to half. With the global agreement on intellectual property rights
(TRIPS) forcing countries to introduce new patent protection laws
over the next decade, this situation could worsen, according to a new
report from the London-based Panos Institute.
Developing countries have until 2005 or 2016 to implement TRIPS-
compliant legislation on pharmaceuticals. So far many governments
have drafted or enacted legislation that seems to prioritise patent
rights over public health. Some countries are being pressurised into
adopting policies that go further than TRIPS in protecting patents.
Patents give big international pharmaceutical firms monopoly over
production of new drugs, including, for example, those needed to
treat HIV/AIDS. There is concern they may push up prices, and the
TRIPS rules could thus limit poor countries' freedom to buy cheaper
"generic" versions of patented drugs. For example, in January 2001,
South African HIV/AIDS treatment activist Zackie Ahmat went to Thai-
land to buy 5,000 pills of the generic version of an anti-fungal drug
patented by the US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer. He paid $0.21 a pill.
The price of the patented version in South Africa was $13.
The Panos Report, Patents, Pills and Public Health: can TRIPS de-
liver? <http://www.panos.org.uk/briefing/TRIPS_front.htm> warns that
patent legislation is not being debated widely enough in most devel-
oping countries, and the process of introducing it needs to be more
consultative and transparent.
In Uganda, for example, American consultants were brought in to re-
view the country's patent laws and make proposals for reform. The re-
sult was the drafting of laws which, according to local campaigners,
are skewed in favour of business interests rather than social or de-
velopment needs.
The principle of extending access to essential drugs in poor coun-
tries is widely supported, but the means of doing this is still hotly
disputed, says the report. According to the World Bank, middle-income
countries may benefit from increased foreign investment, but if the
cost of drugs rises as a result of patent systems spreading through-
out the developing world, there is a real danger of restricting ac-
cess to drugs, such as anti-AIDS drugs, where they are most needed.
The World Health Organisation suggests that implementing patent pro-
tection where it did not already exist would result in the average
price of drugs rising, with projected increases ranging from 12 to
200 percent.
The pharmaceutical industry argues that patent systems promote inno-
vation and investment in research and development. Without patents,
new ones would not be developed to tackle diseases such as tuberculo-
sis and HIV/AIDS. They believe the real barriers to making drugs more
available are poverty, weak political leadership, lack of trained
health personnel and poor health infrastructures.
The report examines alternative approaches and gives examples where
differential pricing (where poorer countries pay considerably less
for a product than wealthier ones) and compulsory licensing (where a
patent is overridden in return for a payment of a royalty) have po-
tential, although they are not free of problems.
Two countries highlighted in the report, show how differently patent
protection can impact on the nation's public health:
Brazil is seen as a model for other countries of what can be achieved
for public health by boosting local production of drugs such as the
anti-AIDS drug AZT, lowering prices through competition and negotiat-
ing discounts on patented drugs. Between 1996 and 2001 around 358,000
AIDS hospitalisations were prevented, saving around $1.1 billion.
On the other hand, Thailand's capacity to provide essential drugs for
its people has been severely limited in the last decade due to re-
lentless pressure from the US to tighten up its patent laws which,
they complained, meant the loss of $30 million a year in sales for
the American pharmaceutical industry because it referred only to
pharmaceutical processes and not products. The US went as far as im-
posing $165 millions' worth of sanctions on eight Thai products ex-
ported to the US. The US continued to exert pressure until the patent
laws were changed and made even more restrictive than the interna-
tional TRIPS agreement requires.
"This report should be a wake-up call to developing countries to look
carefully at how they go about complying with TRIPS legislation and
make sure that access to essential drugs is kept as an overriding
right for the entire population - not just a wealthy few" says Martin
Foreman, author of the Panos report.
The full report can be downloaded from
http://www.panos.org.uk/briefing/TRIPS_front.htm
For further information contact Martin Foreman <idiomist@aol.com>
The Panos Institute is an independent, non-profit organisation spe-
cialising in communication for development. It works to catalyse in-
formed public debate, particularly in developing countries. It has 12
offices in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Caribbean.
Extended versions of the country studies in the report will also be
available to download from the site soon.
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