E-drug: Re: Access to AIDS treatment in Honduras (contd)
----------------------------------------------------------
I think one of the obvious remedies would be a serious effort to use
compulsory licensing of AIDS drugs in poor countries. For this to be
effective, it would have to been a coordinated effort, since the markets
in an individual country, like Honduras, might be too small to justify
entry by generics under a compulsory license, and you would want to
benefit from economies of scale.
I would also recommend that this be done in cooperation with the WHO's
program on essential drugs, in order to plan for the eventual dispute
before the WTO.
My suggestion would be an international proposal backed by public health
experts, which would have criteria to justify participation in the
compulsory licensing program, such as the income of the country and the
incidence of HIV, the 2 main factors which determine the ability to
pay. I would have a royalty paid to the patent owners, of between 3 to
9 percent, depending upon the country income. And I would get together
with various Generic drug industry groups, such as the Europeans, the
Canadians and the GPIA (USA), as well as cooperatives, to get some
suggestions on how to proceed. Thus, you would have two important
allies, the WHO and the generic drug industry, both of which you will
need.
I would be happy to work with people on this important issue. This
should be further along than it is, given the public health crisis in
AIDS in poor countries.
Jamie
James Love, Consumer Project on Technology
P.O. Box 19367, Washington, DC 20036
202.387.8030; f 202.234.5176
http://www.cptech.org,
mailto: love@cptech.org
--
Send mail for the `E-Drug' conference to `e-drug@usa.healthnet.org'.
Mail administrative requests to `majordomo@usa.healthnet.org'.
For additional assistance, send mail to: `owner-e-drug@usa.healthnet.org'.