E-drug: Bangkok Post critical on drug company announcement
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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.
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