Recent attempts by Thailand to provide universal access to treatment for people living with HIV and AIDS have come under severe attack by pharmaceutical company Abbott Laboratories.

On 29th January 2007 the Thai Government issued a compulsory license to produce generic copies of Kaletra- a new 2nd line ARV patented by Abbott Laboratories. The government took this action in the interest of public health. Thailand has a national drug programme aimed at providing universal access to treatment for the 580,000 people living with HIV and AIDS in the country. Currently 82,000 people are on treatment on this programme, but most of these patients are developing resistance to the 1st line drugs (which are cheap since they are no longer under patent) and need to be moved onto 2nd line treatments (which are more expensive since they are under patent).

The Thai government have been in negotiations with Abbott about the cost of Kaletra for several months, but the lowest price offered by Abbott was $2000 per patient per year, 5 times more than the WHO’s estimate of manufacturing costs and a hefty price given the average annual income is only $1400 a year. The government’s decision to issue a compulsory license is perfectly legal under TRIPS (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights), and is one of the first attempts by any country to make use of the flexibilities within the trade agreement which were agreed in the Doha Declaration of 2001. Not only is Thailand well within its rights to do this, but it’s estimated that the license will save the country as much as $24 million annually.

In retaliation Abbott laboratories has now withdrawn applications to register Kaletra and 6 other new drugs in the country. This is the worst possible outcome. Data exclusivity regulations mean the Thai government cannot produce generic copies unless the drug is already registered in the country. The consequence of this will be that thousands of HIV positive people in Thailand will not be moved onto 2nd line ARVs after they develop resistance to the currently available 1st line treatments.

As a campaign we used our Day of Action on March 20th to raise this issue with DFID and the Secretary of State for International Development. Thanks to this tireless lobbying Hilary Benn has agreed to raise the issue at the G8 Development Ministers’ Meeting on 26th and 27th March.

The government of Thailand has acted well within the law in issuing this compulsory license and must be supported. If a middle income country such as Thailand is forced into abandoning the flexibilities what hope is there for low income countries? Political support is crucially important for Thailand in resisting the pressure of corporate interests and protecting the right to health and life.

Take action: Download a sample copy of a letter to send to your MP asking them to raise this issue in parliament.Template letter to MP 26/03/06
If you would like to enclose a copy of the Stop AIDS Campaign G8 Position Paper please download a copy from our resources page.

Email the CEO of Abbott Laboratories to express your concern over what they’ve done and to urge them to reconsider registration of Kaletra in Thailand:
http://www.fightglobalaids.org/action/action.php

For more information visit:
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=65274

This entry was posted on Monday, March 26th, 2007 at 5:53 pm and is filed under Campaign News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.