E-drug: FT: Campaign over drug licensing to grow
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Financial Times
Monday, March 29, 1999
Lead paragraph on page one, full story on page 3
Campaign over drug licensing to grow
by Francis Williams in Geneva
Aids activists and other health and consumer groups plan to step up their
campaign against US government policy on compulsory licensing of
pharmaceuticals patents, which they claim is depriving people in poor
countries of life-saving
drugs.
Washington has threatened sanctions against countries such as Thailand and
South Africa for exercising what groups claim are their legal rights to
insist on compulsory licenses for certain drugs which are not available or
affordable locally.
International patent law and world trade rules allow governments to issue a
compulsory license, enabling a local company to produce a patented drug, if
this is judged to be in the public interest and reasonable terms cannot be
negotiated with the patent owner.
US policy came under a strong attack at a meeting on Friday of some 60
non-governmental organizations from around the world with representatives of
the pharmaceutical industry, governments and international bodies including
the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Trade Organization (WTO).
Bernard Pecoul of Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), which is trying to improve
access to essential drugs, said access had worsened in recent years. The
emergence of new diseases such as HIV/Aids and drug resistant strains of old
ones such as tuberculosis or malaria meant that, increasingly, effective
drugs tended to be protected by patents.
Health groups say the drugs are too expensive or are not sold in developing
countries to avoid undercutting lucrative markets in the US and Europe. The
big US and European pharmaceutical companies argue that compulsory licensing
acts as a disincentive to research and development.
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