peripheries

Is IP in the best interest of Thai patients?

May 30th, 2008 | by User Image

roger |

Pro-Pharma lobbyists are at it again, this time in an editorial of The Wall Street Journal (Good Medicine for Thailand - May 29,2008):

“Slowly, the war on drug patents in Thailand seems to be turning. Last week the government removed one of the most vocal opponents of intellectual property rights from the board of the state-owned Government Pharmaceutical Organization. It’s a small step, but an important one for restoring Thailand’s international reputation and protecting patients’ health.

Vichai Chokevivat strongly supported Thailand’s violation of drug companies’ patents over the past two years. Along with former Health Minister Mongkol na Songkhla and an adviser, Suwit Wibulpolprasert, Mr. Vichai argued that Bangkok was acting according to domestic and international law when it allowed the government to manufacture HIV/AIDS and cancer drugs using formulas patented by Sanofi-Aventis, Abbott Laboratories and other companies.”

It is disappointing, but not surprising, that TWS persists in supporting the myth that Thailand is violating Pharma’s IP rights. Therefore, it will be useful to repeat again that Thailand is not violating drug companies’ patents but is using an international right enshrined in the TRIPS agreement signed by the US and is acting in the spirit of the Doha convention.

In the same editorial one can read that “Thailand also didn’t do much to negotiate with the drug companies before seizing their inventions.”

World AIDS Day, Bangkok 2006.
© 2006 Roger Tatoud

Not only this is untrue (a white paper was published by the Thai government detailing the length and breadth of these negotiations), but the TRIPS agreement clearly states that such negotiations are not required.

In this recurring show of misrepresentation and distortion of facts, I remain stunned that none of those lobbyists question the use of PEPFAR funds - that is public tax payer money often used to buy drugs for developing countries, as much as they argue against the recognized legal right (both by PIJIP and the WHO) of a country to provide the same medicines to its people.

No one object with such virulence when it comes to first world countries using these same rights to issue compulsory licences for fighter jet parts that will be used to kill people.

This is a matter of public and world health, the HIV epidemics does not recognise borders and an untreated epidemic as far away as Thailand do threaten public health everywhere in the world. What is in the interest of all is indeed to provide access to treatment to everybody.

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