HEALTH: New Initiative to make Anti-AIDS Drug Accessible to the Poor

By Emad Mekay Reprint | | Print |

Emad Mekay

DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan 26 2003 (IPS) - HIV/AIDS patients in the world’s poorest countries could, at long last, have access to an affordable medicine under a new initiative launched at the World Economic Forum. A U.S. pharmaceutical company now allows international generic drugs makers the rights to sell its anti-AIDS drug.

HIV/AIDS patients in the world’s poorest countries could, at long last, have access to an affordable medicine under a new initiative launched at the World Economic Forum.

A U.S. pharmaceutical company now allows international generic drugs makers the rights to sell its anti-AIDS drug.

Under the programme, Pharmacia Corporation, one of the world’s largest drug companies, will give voluntary license for a drug called Delavirdine, a medicine for HIV/AIDS, to the Netherlands-based International Dispensary Association Foundation (IDA).

IDA is a global non-profit organization that promotes cheap access to medicines that will in turn give sub-licenses to global generic drugs makers.

Delavirdine, traded under the name Rescriptor, was approved and launched in the U.S. in 1997. It is among the main antiretroviral therapies recommended by the U.S. Department for Health.

The programme could benefit millions of HIV/AIDS patients in 78 developing countries. To qualify for the programme, those countries must have an annual per capita national income of no more than 1200 dollars or an HIV infection rate of one percent of its population.

The combined population of these countries, which include all sub-Saharan African countries, one of the worst AIDS hit areas, is approximately 3.8 billion people.

"This is an innovative approach to the complex access issue that we believe deserves to be tested in real world conditions," said Fred Hassan, Chairman of Pharmacia.

The initiative is the first concrete materialization of a Harvard University proposal that recommends that drug patent holders award voluntary licenses to generic manufacturers who agree to manufacture medicines to the world’s poor in developing countries.

The initiative, co-authored by Amir Attaran, research fellow at Harvard University and Michael Friedman, vice president of Pharmacia, would still give pharmaceutical companies the right to patents protections in countries deemed not poor or with a low rate of HIV/AIDS.

Countries like Mexico or Brazil, for example, may not be areas for selling the drug but generic companies based there would be able to manufacture the drug and sell it on the international market – a move that would further strengthen the international generic drugs market, says Attaran.

Under that model, generic drugs makers, however, won’t be given the right to hike the drugs prices either because there will be many license holders in different countries, providing unlimited competition and constantly pushing the price down, or because the IDA could put a price cap on the drug.

IDA will charge a five percent royalty fee which officials here said would be used to assist licensees, for administrative fees, research and to keep the programme going.

IDA and Pharmacia officials didn’t give a timeframe for when the drug would actually be available at its prospective low price. But said that there were "three or four" generic companies have already expressed interest in getting a license.

When implemented, the programme is likely to anger many patented drugs manufacturers in industrialized countries, who have for long resisted licensing of necessary drugs for epidemics like HIV/AIDS and Tuberculosis, citing financial risks to profit and to funding for other research programmes.

They also fear that such a programme, often called for by humanitarian organizations and civil society groups, would set a precedent and, in the long run, shut down their markets in developing countries and encourage lifting patents on other drugs.

Under pressure form civil society groups, some of these companies – GlaxoSmithKline PLC and Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. – have offered drugs at cosmetic discounted prices. Yet, the half-hearted effort did not bring drugs prices down for millions of impoverished and ill people in the developing lands.

Friedman of Pharmacia, however, said those companies need not be worried about their patents in rich countries since the company does not want to mess with the patent system.

Pharmacia says that it will ask generic companies to sell the drug in a different shape and colour from the original drug so that it would be harder to smuggle it back to the U.S. and other rich countries.

Anti-retroviral drugs are desperately needed in the developing countries where HIV/AIDS rates are steep.

Many health and humanitarian organizations have called HIV/AIDS the worst human disaster ever with 40 million infected and thousand dying by the day.

A group of panellists gathering here at the World Economic Forum discussing drugs patent applauded the initiative but said the battle to terminate the disease is far from over.

They called on other drugs manufactures in rich nations to emulate Pharmacia and appealed to international donors to help finance the plan, through providing money to buy the drug in poor countries.

"What we want to do today is at least give one option for the poor countries," said Friedman.

"The important thing to recognize is that this effort is only half of what’s needed. .. The problem right now is that there’s no demand side because there’s no money to buy even the generics," Attaran warned. "These countries are deadly poor. They are dying by the millions."

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which was originally set up and funded by the G7 nations, says that it urgently needs six billion dollars to help finance the fight against the disease this year alone.

"We are calling for an additional six billion dollars in 2003-04," said Richard Feachem of the Fund. "This is a last chance effort to stop the greatest epidemic that affected the human species in human history. Countries are shutting down because of this virus."

The panellists also faulted rich nations for not coming forth with the needed money – a small amount in relation to the size of the AIDS epidemic and, for example, the war on Iraq which could cost around two billion dollars.

"If I were an aid donor sitting in Washington, or Canada or Japan, I’d be laughing because I’d be looking at how much anxiety has taken place in the non-profit sector, the charities and so on, over treating AIDS and I have done nothing, nobody has challenged me and I am getting away with it," said Attaran.