|
Access
To Essential Drugs May Be
Undermined By Global Patent Agreement
Panos
Institute
December 1, 2002
A third of the world’s
population still has no access to essential drugs. In the poorest
countries of Africa and Asia this figure rises to half. With the global
agreement on intellectual property rights (TRIPS) forcing countries to
introduce new patent protection laws over the next decade, this situation
could worsen, according to a new report from the London-based Panos
Institute.
Developing countries have
until 2005 or 2016 to implement TRIPS-compliant legislation on
pharmaceuticals. So far many governments have drafted or enacted
legislation that seems to prioritise patent rights over public health.
Some countries are being pressurised into adopting policies that go
further than TRIPS in protecting patents.
Patents give big
international pharmaceutical firms monopoly over production of new drugs,
including, for example, those needed to treat HIV/AIDS. There is concern
they may push up prices, and the TRIPS rules could thus limit poor
countries’ freedom to buy cheaper “generic” versions of patented
drugs. For example, in January 2001, South African HIV/AIDS treatment
activist Zackie Ahmat went to Thailand to buy 5,000 pills of the generic
version of an anti-fungal drug patented by the US pharmaceutical giant
Pfizer. He paid $0.21 a pill. The price of the patented version in South
Africa was $13.
The Panos Report, Patents,
Pills and Public Health: can TRIPS deliver? warns that patent
legislation is not being debated widely enough in most developing
countries, and the process of introducing it needs to be more consultative
and transparent.
In Uganda, for example,
American consultants were brought in to review the country’s patent laws
and make proposals for reform. The result was the drafting of laws which,
according to local campaigners, are skewed in favour of business interests
rather than social or development needs.
The principle of extending
access to essential drugs in poor countries is widely supported, but the
means of doing this is still hotly disputed, says the report. According to
the World Bank, middle-income countries may benefit from increased foreign
investment, but if the cost of drugs rises as a result of patent systems
spreading throughout the developing world, there is a real danger of
restricting access to drugs, such as anti-AIDS drugs, where they are most
needed. The World Health Organisation suggests that implementing patent
protection where it did not already exist would result in the average
price of drugs rising, with projected increases ranging from 12 to 200
percent.
The pharmaceutical industry
argues that patent systems promote innovation and investment in research
and development. Without patents, new ones would not be developed to
tackle diseases such as tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS. They believe the real
barriers to making drugs more available are poverty, weak political
leadership, lack of trained health personnel and poor health
infrastructures.
The report examines
alternative approaches and gives examples where differential pricing
(where poorer countries pay considerably less for a product than wealthier
ones) and compulsory licensing (where a patent is overridden in return for
a payment of a royalty) have potential, although they are not free of
problems.
Two countries highlighted in
the report, show how differently patent protection can impact on the
nation’s public health:
Brazil is seen as a model
for other countries of what can be achieved for public health by boosting
local production of drugs such as the anti-AIDS drug AZT, lowering prices
through competition and negotiating discounts on patented drugs. Between
1996 and 2001 around 358,000 AIDS hospitalisations were prevented, saving
around $1.1 billion.
On the other hand,
Thailand’s capacity to provide essential drugs for its people has been
severely limited in the last decade due to relentless pressure from the US
to tighten up its patent laws which, they complained, meant the loss of
$30 million a year in sales for the American pharmaceutical industry
because it referred only to pharmaceutical processes and not products. The
US went as far as imposing $165 millions’ worth of sanctions on eight
Thai products exported to the US. The US continued to exert pressure until
the patent laws were changed and made even more restrictive than the
international TRIPS agreement requires.
“This report should be a wake-up call to
developing countries to look carefully at how they go about complying with
TRIPS legislation and make sure that access to essential drugs is kept as
an overriding right for the entire population – not just a wealthy
few” says Martin Foreman, author of the Panos report.
Copyright
© 2002 Global Action on Aging
Terms of Use | Privacy
Policy | Contact Us
|
