E-drug: MSF Press release - Brussels - 28/09/00
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Please find below the press release which MSF - Access to Essential
Medicines issued today at midday during the International Round Table
on "Reduction of Poverty : strategic action towards AIDS/HIV, malaria
and TB" organised by the EU with WHO and UNAIDS.
COMMISSION LOOKS AT LINK BETWEEN PATENTS AND PRICES
OF LIFE-SAVING DRUGS IN POOR COUNTRIES
1200 noon - Brussels, 28 September 2000 -
Today, the European Commission met with leaders of poor countries and
with the Directors of WHO and UNAIDS in a roundtable to address three
diseases that are threatening to wipe out the economic gains of the
last fifty years: tuberculosis, Aids and malaria. Communicable
diseases are responsible for 60 percent of the total disease burden
in developing countries and kill 5 million people each year.
World-wide 34 million people are infected with HIV, one person dies
every 30 seconds from malaria and nearly one billion people will be
newly infected with TB over the next twenty years.
At today's high-level round table, the WHO, UNAIDS and the European
Commission proposed a blueprint for increasing life expectancy in
poor countries by directly attacking these three leading killers.
Although the proposal is strong on much needed prevention efforts, it
is weak on ensuring that the sick have access to newer life-saving
medicines.
'Today's roundtable shows that the Commission is serious about
tackling disease and poverty, and is open to the use of WTO
safeguards which balance the negative effects of patents. But there
is still a long way to go.' said Dr. Bernard Pecoul of Medecins sans
Frontieres (MSF). 'How can the EU be serious about fighting Aids in
poor countries if they are not willing to discuss treatment for
patients with drug cocktails. We need a political commitment that
Europe will not stand by and watch while 26 million people die of
Aids in Africa because medicines are too expensive.'
At the roundtable, to present the case for dramatically lower prices of
important health interventions in developing countries, MSF used the
example of vaccines and contraceptives. Because of the public health
need, and clear political commitment, the polio vaccine is priced 125
times less in poor countries than in wealthy ones. The situation is
very similar with oral
contraceptives, the difference between the US retail price and the
price paid by national family planning programs is between 130:214
times.
NGOs and other public health advocates are demanding a political
commitment from the EU to support developing countries to implement
this type of price differential. If companies are not willing to
offer these levels of price deductions, than poor country governments
must be allowed to use WTO compliant measures to override patents.
Competition from generic medicines should also be encouraged.
'We have a moral obligation to ensure that new life-saving medicines,
such as antibiotics and anti-Aids drugs, are affordable and available
to people who need them,' said Dr. Bernard P�coul. 'We have the
tools to solve this problem. We have already done it with vaccines
and contraceptives, its time to do it with medicines for Aids and for
multi-drug resistant tuberculosis.' he added.
At the roundtable, MSF urged national governments in poor countries
to use the safeguards that are built into the WTO agreements on
intellectual property (TRIPS), when companies are not willing to
reduce prices to levels that make drugs affordable. In the recent
'Communication of the Commission to the Council and European
Parliament' on this issue, the Commission brought to light the
possibility of using compulsory licensing to override patents on
medicines in poor countries. This is a radical shift. In November 99,
an official of DG trade stated at a public meeting, that patents had
nothing to do with the access crisis and should not be used as a
mechanism to address this issue. MSF welcomed this shift of position.
For further information please call MSF office: Tel: 02 280 1881 or
mobile: 0486 200029 Samantha Bolton or Seco Gerard. Daniel Berman
Laure BONNEVIE <Laure_BONNEVIE@geneva.msf.org>
Access project coordinator is on Tel: 00 41 79 286 9649.
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