HEALTH: Reform R&D to Cut Drug Prices, Say NGOs

By Gustavo Capdevila Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Apr 12 2001 (IPS) - The tensions arising from the big pharmaceutical transnationals’ opposition to slashing medication prices for poor countries could be disarmed through a new international convention on medical research and development (R&D), agree independent experts.

Five health-oriented non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have proposed negotiating a treaty that would favour access of poor countries to medications, but without jeopardising scientific progress.

The initiative, signed by Doctors without Borders and Oxfam International among others, is an attempt to silence the main argument wielded by the pharmaceutical giants in their objections to reducing drug prices for developing countries.

The pharmaceutical companies “raise the spectre that any effort to help the poor will harm R&D of new medicines and, as a result, the advance of science,” say the NGOs.

The transnationals also maintain that proposals to lower drug prices in developing countries, including compulsory licensing of patents on essential medicines, would lower their profits.

The five NGOs, which also include the Consumer Project on Technology (CPT), Health Action International (HAI) and Treatment Action Group (TAG), plan to present their proposal before the World Health Assembly in May.

These independent groups will ask the Assembly to authorise the World Health Organisation (WHO) as sponsor of the negotiations on the proposed R&D Convention by the end of this year.

The convention should create mechanisms to promote financing for global R&D, say the NGOs.

Funding for these scientific activities must occur “in ways consistent with access to medicines and health needs by encouraging research on diseases neglected” by most pharmaceutical laboratories.

One of the criticisms against the pharmaceutical industry is that its research tends to concentrate on diseases that are more prevalent among higher-income sectors of the world’s industrialised countries, while ignoring the illnesses that are causing widespread suffering and devastation in poor countries.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, HIV/AIDS affects as much as 25 percent of the adult population, but the countries there cannot afford treatment for their populations with the medications produced by the transnational drug companies.

According to the five NGO signatories of the initiative, the new convention would be “designed to strengthen both public- and private-sector research.”

The proposal was announced Thursday in a document that expresses the NGOs’ disappointment in the results of a workshop held this week in Norway, jointly sponsored by the WHO and the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

The debate among health and trade officials revolved around the elimination of long-term trade barriers and access to low-cost medications.

International controversy has intensified in recent months about trade norms that govern intellectual property rights for medications and the obstacles they represent for the production and sales of cheaper pharmaceuticals to poor countries.

The meeting, held in Norway and hosted by that nation’s government, ended without any real progress made, lament the health-focused NGOs.

WHO director general Gro Harlem Brundtland, meanwhile, indicated that most of the participants in the workshop agreed it is feasible to provide low-cost medicines to poor countries despite the reluctance of drug companies to cut prices.

She called for a balanced approach, stressing that the world needs access to lower-priced drugs and diagnostics, and to build up the health systems that make it happen.

The Norway debate included discussion on the differential pricing mechanisms proposed, which would allow companies to sell the same drug to poor countries at a lower price than charged to wealthier countries.

Nevertheless, the NGOs emphasised that such mechanisms cannot come with conditions attached that would be “onerous” for developing countries.

The nations of the developing South benefiting from differentiated prices would have to surrender their rights under the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS).

During the more than two days of talks in Norway earlier this week, none of the pharmaceutical corporations disclosed a plan to implement differential pricing for the medications they manufacture.

Jamie Love, of the CPT, commented, “It’s ironic that at a meeting organised to help the poor, the main drug company proposals were to increase intellectual property protection and ask for the elimination of national price controls.”