E-DRUG: GlaxoSmithKline urged to pool its patents on HIV drugs
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Sarah Boseley, health editor
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 6 September 2009 20.41 BST
[copied as fair use]
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/sep/06/glaxosmithkline-hiv-drugs-urged
Leading UK and international organisations have written to Britain's largest
drug company urging it to pool its patents on HIV medicines to help save
millions of lives in developing countries.
A letter from 15 organisations, including the Stop Aids Campaign, Médecins
Sans Frontières, Unicef and Christian Aid, calls on
GlaxoSmithKline<http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/glaxosmithkline>to
join a patent pool being put together by Unitaid, which aims to improve
access to drugs for HIV/Aids and other diseases in poor countries.
The patent pool would allow cheap copies and combinations of Aids drugs to
be made without legal restraint or delays from the manufacturers, whose
monopolies are protected for 20 years.
The letter follows an article in the Guardian in which Andrew Witty, the
chief executive of GlaxoSmithKline, said that all he knew of Unitaid was
what he had read in the papers.
On a trip to Katine in northern Uganda, where the Guardian sponsors a
development project, Witty made clear his reservations about a patent pool
for HIV drugs, although he said: "I'm not saying no to anything because
nobody's actually put in front of me a really concrete proposition." He
added that GSK was already doing a lot to help those with HIV in developing
countries, including funding research into drugs for children, and he was
willing to let generic companies make cheap copies of its HIV drugs under
licence.
Witty went to Katine at the Guardian's invitation to explain how his own
plans to help the developing world would work in one corner of Africa.
He has cut the prices of GSK drugs in poor countries to no more than a
quarter of the level in the west and promised to reinvest 20% of profits on
those drugs in the developing world. He has also launched a patent pool of
his own, with more than 800 compounds and molecules that might be useful to
researchers into neglected diseases. Aids, he says, is not a neglected
disease.
In response, the 15 organisations wrote in their letter: "GSK's insistence
that a patent pool for HIV is unnecessary is surprising given the woeful
lack of innovation into HIV treatments suitable for children and the obvious
need for new safer and more effective fixed dose combinations for adults."
The group also urged Witty to meet Unitaid.
Alan Smith, chair of the Stop Aids Campaign, said: "The Unitaid patent pool
is our best hope of increasing access to life-saving medicines on the scale
that is needed to achieve universal access.
"It is crucial that Andrew Witty and GSK … engage in an honest and positive
manner with the Unitaid taskforce."
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2009
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UNITAID - Medicines Patent Pool Initiative
20 Avenue Appia // 1211 Geneva 27 // Switzerland
Tel +41 22 791 3778 // Fax +41 22 791 4890
utdmppi@gmail.com // borolim@who.int // www.unitaid.eu
What is a Patent Pool?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vj0dbFgjoh4