E-DRUG: NCD Alliance 'Access to Essential Medicines & Technologies for NCDs' briefing paper (2)
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The position paper of the NCD Alliance on Access to Essential Medicines
and Technologies for NCDs is regrettably short-sighted with respect to the
threat posed by the international intellectual property regime to access
to NCD diagnostics and medicines. The report states that "nearly all
essential NCD medicines are off patent or were never patented and are
widely available as generic products at affordable prices." In reaching
this conclusion, the report focuses exclusively on NCD medicines available
on the WHO essential medicines list and ignores new and emerging medicines
and diagnostics that will offer significant advances in treatment and
possibly cures.
Many expensive NCD medicines are kept off the WHO EML precisely because
they are expensive. The report largely ignores cancer medicines and
psychiatric medicines, both of which are considerably more expensive.
But more importantly, the report neglects to look down the road to the
barriers that will be presented in the future in accessing newer, more
effective medicines and diagnostics for NCDs. The patent and data
protection regimes are tightening, lengthening, and deepening in a way
that presents a real threat to access to NCD medicines. First-generation,
first-line AIDS medicines are also generally off patent and now affordable
at less than $67/pppy. But improved, second- and third-generation
medicines are considerably more expensive and much more widely patented
under the TRIPS regime. AIDS activists, looking down the same road that
should be visible to NCD advocates, have mounted a protracted and
continuing campaign for adoption and use of TRIPS flexibilities and
against IPR tsunami Big Pharma is pushing to increase both substantive and
enforcement protections for IPRs.
The same countries that are opposing targets and funding for NCDs are
opposing reference to TRIPS flexibilities and reduced trade pressures.
These same countries were forced to adopt such language at the HLM on
HIV and AIDS this past June. The NCD coalition needs to sharpen its analysis
and to fight for IP flexibilities at the HLM and beyond.
Professor Brook K. Baker
Health GAP (Global Access Project)
Northeastern U. School of Law
Program on Human Rights and the Global Economy
400 Huntington Ave.
Boston, MA 02115 USA
Honorary Research Fellow, University of KwaZulu Natal, Durban, S. Africa
(w) 617-373-3217
(cell) 617-259-0760
(fax) 617-373-5056
b.baker@neu.edu