[procaare] Throw Open the Doors! - Activist Offers the Drug Companies A Deal

[AIDS2002 & HDN <procaare@usa.healthnet.org>]

Throw Open the Doors! - Activist Offers the Drug Companies A Deal
***************************

In a dramatic speech screened at yesterday's plenary, Zackie Achmat, the ailing South
African AIDS activist, called for the proprietary drug companies to waive patent
restrictions and throw open the doors to a competitive market in generic drugs throughout
the developing world.

"The partial price reductions and insufficient donations by drug companies will not assist
in the long term to deal with the epidemic in a sustainable and an effective manner," said
Achmat, who in 1998 was one of the founders of South Africa's Treatment Action Campaign.

"What is required is generic competition, and therefore we appeal to all the brand-name
drug companies to issue non-restriction voluntary licenses at between 3-4% royalty, to
ensure that poor countries and communities have access to ARV therapy."

He said this would eliminate the "unnecessary conflict" between the activist community,
government and drug companies.

In recent years, major drug manufacturers have slashed their prices or agreed to give away
HIV drug in low- and middle-income countries, but with few exceptions they have yet to
surrender their patent rights.

This makes it illegal for domestic manufacturers to produce generic versions of brand-name
drugs. Critics argue that by waiving patent rights and granting licences to generic
manufacturers, the world's largest drug companies would open the way for fierce
competition and vastly open up access to antiretrovirals.
WHO estimates that 6 million people in the developing world are at risk of dying within
two years if they do not receive antiretroviral therapy soon.

Drug companies deny that high prices are the main factor limiting access to HIV-drugs.
Peter Hare, Vice President (HIV Business for the United States) at Glaxo Smith Kline told
AIDS 2000 that lack of public health infrastructure, not drug pricing, is mainly to blame
for the lack of access to treatment in poor countries.

"In India, for example, where the generic manufacturer Cipra is based, prices are the
lowest in the world, yet how many Indians have access to antiretrovirals?" Hare said. "So
patents are not the main issue: countries need doctors who know how to prescribe
medicines, they need clinics, they need patient education programmes to ensure that people
adhere to their regimens."
Achmat said that pilot projects conducted by Médecins Sans Frontières in resource-poor
settings, such as Khayelitsha, outside Cape Town, have clearly demonstrated that HIV drugs
can be provided without sophisticated public health infrastructure. But he added that
governments must demonstrate the political will to fight AIDS and to fund public health
care systems.

Achmat, who has been living with HIV since the early 1990s, was unable to attend the
Barcelona conference owing to a lung infection. In 1998, he declared that he would not
take antiretroviral drugs until the South African government agreed to fund a national
pilot project providing HIV treatment free of charge. This has yet to happen. In January,
he told a South African meeting that his CD4 cell count stood at 235.

AIDS 2002 Conference News produced by Health & Development Networks/Key Correspondent Team
www.hdnet.org - correspondents@hdnet.org

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