A huge step towards fair drug pricing and access to treatment was made this week when UNITAID, the international drug purchasing facility, gave the green light to exploration of the creation of patent pools for HIV and AIDS drugs. The hope is that the six-month research phase will lead to a working model of the mechanism.

Patent pools have long been called for by Student Stop AIDS campaigners and the wider AIDS lobby as they offer a practical way to reward pharmaceuticals for their research and innovation as well as getting affordable, appropriate treatment to those who need it most. This initiative has been championed by the UK government and warmly welcomed by those involved in the fight to increase access to medcines. Ellen ‘t Hoen, Director of Policy at Médecins Sans Frontiers’ Access Campaign believes “UNITAID has shown great vision and understanding of what needs to be done – this could potentially have a big impact, both for access to medicines and for medical innovation”.

Patent Pools are a one stop shop where licences to produce drugs are centrally managed. Pharmaceuticals, and other patent holders like universities, negotiate an agreement to hand over the rights of their drugs to the pool, and then low and middle income countries can come to the pool to acquire the right to use those licences. This method holds the prospect of developing countries saving millions of pounds and thousands of lives by making generic versions of new drugs available without the standard 20 year wait for patents to expire.

Current patent protection laws mean WHO-recommended treatment costs between $613 and $1,022 per year as opposed to older, lower quality first line treatments which now cost only $87 per year thanks to increased competition. Patent pools can foster that same competition for all anti-retroviral drugs.

UNITAID is an international agency which was created by Brazil, Chile, France, Norway and the United Kingdom in 2006 and uses taxes on air tickets to finance sustainable methods in facilitating access to treatment facilitating access to treatment or the world’s greatest pandemics; HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis.

Their new initiative holds huge potential to deliver access to the vital medicines needed across the world to ensure people aren’t dying because of the exorbitant price of a pill. The Stop AIDS Campaign strongly supports UNITAID’s innovative step and looks forward to seeing the implementation of a strong patent pool. supported by all governments and pharmaceuticals.

Read the original text of the UNITAID resolution here.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 15th, 2008 at 10:41 am 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.