For the past 5 months a fierce battle has been fought between the right of countries to protect public health and the right of companies to make a profit.

Our campaign for Universal Access to treatment has this year focused on making the flexibilities for public health within the TRIPS agreement work. These flexibilities have been in place since 2001 and yet they have hardly been used. Countries do, in theory have the right to override patents in the interest of public health and produce or import generic versions of essential medicines, but in reality very few countries have ever attempted to do this.

It has been our conviction that the reasons behind this are two-fold: countries face technical and political barriers that prevent them from attempting to use these ‘flexibilities’. In light of this we decided to challenge the UK government to take action on this and ensure that these barriers were broken down so that Universal Access to treatment could become a reality.

In 29th January this year the challenge was made real as the government of Thailand issued a compulsory license under the TRIPS flexibilities to produce generic copies of Kaletra- a new 2nd line ARV patented by Abbott Laboratories. Thailand was facing a situation where increasing numbers of patients on anti-retroviral treatment needed to be moved onto second line drugs, but the government could not afford to pay the high prices charged for these drugs. (To read the full story click here)

For the campaign this was highly significant. If the UK government did fully support the rights of countries to use the flexibilities to promote public health, then it should be in support of Thailand’s actions and should publicly say so.

The barriers preventing Thailand from using these flexibilities were only too clear. Abbott Laboratories who own the patent on Kaletra retaliated against the Thai government in the strongest possible way: they withdrew applications to register Kaletra and 6 other new drugs in the country. Following this in May this year the US government announced that it had placed Thailand on its priority watch list for countries violating US intellectual property.

Given the strength of the opposition Thailand was facing the UK government came under pressure from campaigners to live up to its promises. On March 20th over a hundred Student Stop AIDS campaigners met with Hilary Benn, the Secretary of State for International Development. They called for the UK to show support for Thailand, but it became clear quite early on that this wasn’t something the government were on top off. They seemed hazy on the details and avoided making any commitments or statements in support of Thailand at all.

Campaigners and lobbyists worked together to push this issue. Awareness was raised and as a result a significant shift in position has been observed. This week Gareth Thomas, the under secretary of state for International Development explicitly stated in a letter to campaigners that:

“The Thai Government has made the decision to use these TRIPS flexibilities in the form of compulsory licensing based on their
assessment of the public health need within Thailand. We support Thailand’s right to use compulsory licensing provisions in order to protect public health, and in particular, to promote access to medicines for all.”

He also said:

“We agree that Thailand’s stated use of compulsory licensing provisions has not broken any WTO rules as there is no obligation to negotiate with the rights holder if the products are for public non-commercial use. However, we feel that both sides can gain significant benefit from constructive dialogue and we are pleased that the Thai government has decided to establish a working group where such discussions can take place.”

The UK government should be congratulated for taking this stand. The government of Thailand needs this political support in order that it can stand up against the pressure from the US and the pharmaceutical industry.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 24th, 2007 at 12:44 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.