Geneva - 20 April 2009 - UNITAID and the Clinton Foundation’s HIV/AIDS
Initiative (CHAI) have just announced price reductions negotiated with
generic companies for 41 adult and paediatric antiretroviral formulations
to treat HIV/AIDS.  This is welcome news which must be interpreted with
caution, says international medical humanitarian organisation, Médecins
Sans Frontières (MSF).

Among the price drops, one of the more notable is the fall in the price of
tenofovir (TDF).  In 2006, WHO guidelines suggested that countries start to
move away from older regimens based on stavudine which cause significant
side effects, to less toxic one-pill-a-day regimens that include TDF.  But
the high price of tenofovir has, until now, been a significant barrier,
meaning that many patients have gone without the better regimen.

“These new prices go a long way in removing one of the major barriers that
was stopping countries from putting people on the best treatment possible,”
said Janice Lee, pharmacist at the MSF Access to Essential Medicines
Campaign. “We challenge donors and governments to roll out this new
treatment and urge WHO speed up the prequalification process for
easy-to-use three-in-one combination pills containing tenofovir.”

Also significant is the fact that the price of lopinavir/ritonavir (LPV/r)
has been slashed to below US$500 for one patient’s yearly treatment course.
LPV/r is one of the protease inhibitors recommended by WHO for second-line
treatment.  This latest move means that generic manufacturers are now
pricing this crucial drug more affordably than the patent-holder, Abbott
Laboratories, whose policies have in the past severely restricted access to
LPV/r in developing countries.

“These falls in prices show, once again, that generic competition is the
most effective way in driving the price of life-saving medicines down,”
said Michelle Childs, Director of Policy & Advocacy at MSF.

While CHAI announces that the prices for these new discounted generic drugs
are open to the 70 countries included in its consortium, in a number of
them the drugs are actually patented by the originator company.  This means
that the generic versions of the drugs cannot enter unless there is a
voluntary agreement, or the country issues a compulsory licence. As a
result, patients in those countries will not be able to access the more
affordable generic versions.  This includes countries like China, South
Africa or Colombia.

“This announcement has a sting in its tail - for a number of countries
included in the CHAI list, patent barriers mean that in reality these
prices will be unavailable.  These discounts will remain paper promises
unless there is a clear strategy from UNITAID and CHAI to find a way to
overcome these barriers to affordable access.  UNITAID’s proposal for a
patent pool for HIV medicines could be one solution, provided all
developing countries can benefit from it. In addition, policy and technical
support should be given by WHO to those countries who may have to issue a
compulsory licence.”

Sheffield Boom Dynamite video on YouTube

Sheffield Boom Dynamite video on Facebook

Thank you to everybody who came and danced like crazy. Without you, it wouldn’t have been possible! We had lots of fun, and I had a good giggle editing it all together, so please watch it and chuckle away!

ActionAid’s put your foot down campaign is calling on the UK government to take action on violence against women – a major driver of HIV and AIDS in developing countries.

By International Women’s Day on March 8, we want a total of 2,876 people to have signed our petition – that’s the number of women who contract HIV around the world each day.  With just two weeks to go, we’re still a few hundred signatures short and we urgently need your help to meet our target.

How you can help:

• Sign our online petition here.
• Help to spread the word by letting five of your friends know about the campaign.  Send them an email or use our online sharing tools here.

Please take five minutes to support this really important campaign.  If you’d like more info, you can find out more here.

There are over 1,500 young people living with HIV in the UK. Over the past year the National AIDS Trust has uncovered worrying cases of children and staff being discriminated against just because they are HIV positive. NAT has set up a petition, asking the government to ensure that this becomes a thing of the past. Sign it here.

Right now people aged 50 and over aren’t included in monitoring and reporting of the AIDS epidemic.  Help the Aged have created a petition to call for this to be put right. They want to deliver the petition to DFID in March. Sign up here.

If you want to see them as soon as they are released sign the Push for the Pool campaign e-petition here.

We want at least 100 students from all the societies to get down to London on the 24th, when we have an appointment with Ivan Lewis, the government minister responsible for the UK’s AIDS response.

After that we’ll head for Parliament when hopefully all of us will have managed to arrange a meeting with our MP to talk them through our two big issues: the funding crisis at the Global Fund, and the Push for the Pool Campaign.

We need you in London at 10am on Tuesday 24th March when we’ll get you fully briefed on the day and what you need to do.

It will be a fantastic chance to speak directly to the man responsible for the UK’s promise to deliver universal access to prevention, treatment, care and support by 2010. You also get to flex your democratic muscle by ensuring walking straight into parliament to get your MP’s support for our campaign.

Talk to your society president, contact me or get in touch with your steering committee rep for more details. And book your tickets!

We’ll round off the day with a mass photo stunt and King’s have promised to organise the evening’s entertainment. Don’t miss out – we’ll be able to cover most of your travel costs and find you a place to crash in London if you need it, but you’ll need to confirm you’re coming asap!

Email me for details: diarmaid.mcdonald@spw.org
 

Students Partnership Worldwide (which coordinates the Student Stop AIDS Campaign) put on the weekend in partnership with the International HIV/AIDS Alliance.

The workshops covered all aspects of the campaign and featured staff from the DFID HIV team (the man who led the writing of the UK AIDS Strategy!), the Alliance, SPW, the Stop AIDS Campaign, as well as a prospective parliamentary candidate – Simon Burgess.

The intensive schedule mixed information and learning with campaign strategy and planning exercises to ensure everyone was heading back to their universities with an action plan for the months ahead.

We’ll be producing a report on the whole weekend to circulate to you all – so if you didn’t make it to Brighton you can find out everything you missed.

The feedback on the weekend was really great and everyone went away brimming with enthusiasm. A mass performance of the “Stop AIDS is Boom Dynamite” song (thanks Leeds) on Brighton beach followed by a near naked Tom hurling himself into the sea sent everyone off on a high – ready for the work ahead!

First on the agenda is the student week of action starting on Monday, followed by the National Day of Action on the 24th when we campaigners from across the country will be meeting with Under-Secretary of State for International Development, Ivan Lewis MP in London. Find out more about the Day of Action here.

Thanks so much to everyone who helped out over the weekend, and thanks to everyone who came – you were hugely inspiring!

Patenting, TRIPS, Compulsory Licensing – What is it all about??

So we hear lots of people complaining about ‘patents’, talking about ‘TRIPS’ and phrases like ‘compulsory licensing’ flying around, but what does it all mean? PharmAware felt that it was about time all of this was explained so you can decide for yourselves what you think and whether the World Trade Organisation (WTO) has got it right or wrong…

What is TRIPS?

TRIPS stands for ‘Trade Related aspects of Intellectual Property Rights’. It was instigated by the WTO as a means of ‘striking a balance between providing incentives for future inventions and creations in the long term, whilst allowing people to use existing inventions and creations in the short term’.[1] In brief it aims to protect the rights of those who invent products and ensure that they are getting the support financially to fund the development of their products, whilst still allowing for the use of the products to support future developments by other individuals or groups.

So does it just include pharmaceutical medicines?

No, although it’s the pharmaceutical industry that gets the most publicity with regards to TRIPS, the agreement actually covers a wide range of subjects, from copyright and trademarks, to integrated circuit designs and trade secrets.

What is Patenting and what part does it play in TRIPS?

Patents provide the patent owner with the legal means to prevent others from making, using, or selling the new invention for a limited period of time, subject to a number of

exceptions.1 WTO members have to provide patent protection for any invention, whether a product (such as a medicine) or a process (such as a method of producing the chemical ingredients for a medicine). Patent protection has to last at least

20 years.1 There are some exceptions to this though…

• Inventions whose commercial exploitation needs to be prevented to protect human, animal or plant life or health.
• Diagnostic, therapeutic, and surgical methods for treating humans or animals.
• Certain plant and animal inventions.

So for example, if a country as signed up to the TRIPS agreement and GlaxoSmithKline invent a new drug for TB they can apply to that government for patent protection. When granted this would prevent any generic production by other companies of this drug, preventing pricing competition and ensuring that Glaxo got their money back for the research and development of the drug.

That all sounds great for the big pharmaceutical companies but won’t this mean that they can charge what they like as no other companies will be able to compete with them?

Well to some degree yes, they can choose the price and ensure that they are making enough to cover their research, development and production costs and make money from the fact that they invented the drug. However there are restrictions. The WTO state that as part of TRIPS governments can act to prevent patent owners and other holders of intellectual property rights from abusing those rights, ‘unreasonably restraining trade’, or hampering international transfer of technology.1 How this works in practice though is difficult to see. It is often the large pharmaceutical companies from the powerful developed countries who are the patent holders. The developing countries, who in many cases rely on the debt relief and aid from these developed countries, are then placed in a very difficult situation. Keeping the donors happy whilst ensuring that their people have access to the drugs they need at an affordable price.

What does compulsory licensing mean? Doesn’t this also stop situations like this?

Compulsory licensing is when a government allows someone else to produce the patented product or process without the consent of the patent owner. It’s also known as ‘use without authorisation of the rights holder’.1 Compulsory licensing or government use of a product without the authorisation of the owner can be obtained only under certain conditions. These include:1

• Having first sought voluntary licensing from the patent holder and been unsuccessful. Unless…
• There is a ‘national emergency’, ‘other circumstances of extreme urgency’ or ‘public non-commercial use’.

This is where the Doha Declaration (2001) comes into play. This was an additional declaration that was made to ensure the protection of particularly developing countries, to ensure public health is supported through the TRIPS agreement. It states that members of the WTO have the right to decide when and under what circumstances compulsory licenses are granted and what determines a ‘national emergency’.1

As well as compulsory licensing there are also ‘parallel imports’ or ‘grey imports’. This is where a country can legally import a patented drug from another country without the permission of the patent owner.1 So if say a company makes a drug under patent in country A and exports it to country B, if the drug is sold cheaper in country B, country A can import the drug from country B at the lower price. This is because the drug company has exhausted its patent rights on the batch that was originally exported to country B.

This all sounds good, the drug companies get their costs covered and are stopped from charging too much, governments can over-rule patent rights with compulsory licensing if they need it and they can even import the patented drugs from other countries if they’re cheaper. So what is all the fuss about?

Well in theory it is great and ensures the best deal for everyone. But…Pharmaceutical companies can be very corrupt in the way in which they deal with countries and will often do all they can to influence countries into not issuing compulsory licenses. Preventing them from charging too much is also difficult to implement and patenting is preventing the cheaper generic production of much needed drugs. As mentioned earlier, the big pharmaceutical companies are from the more powerful, developed countries such as the United States and the UK. It is these countries who are providing much needed debt relief and aid, therefore a huge power struggle exists and developing countries can be left in situations whereby they are not exercising their rights to issue compulsory licenses or not grant patent rights through fear that they may jeopardise their relationship with the countries that they are dependant upon.    

For more information on TRIPS and Patenting see: Reference 1

For more information on the negative impact of TRIPS see: http://www.oxfam.org.uk/what_we_do/issues/health/wto_patentrules.htm

Monday 2nd March:
- 5pm-7.30pm: We will be holding a stall in Interval, in the union
- 7.30pm: Introduction to the Campaign talk, Saptal Ram room in the union.
This will be a great opportunity to learn more about the current campaign and find out how to get involved with the society.

Tuesday 3rd March:
- 7.30pm: HIV-positive speakers from SHIELD (the South Yorkshire HIV charity) are coming to chat with us in the University Arms (the pub next to the union)

Also..
16th March - we are holding our AGM at 6pm in the Saptal Ram room in the union
24th March - DAY OF ACTION, London