Aid agencies praise AIDS drugs deal for poor
12 Jul 2011 18:20
Students form a red ribbon during an HIV/AIDS awareness rally on World AIDS Day at Marina beach in the southern Indian city of Chennai on December 1, 2010. REUTERS/Babu
LONDON (AlertNet) - Aid agencies have hailed a landmark deal between a major AIDS drug manufacturer and a new patent pooling system designed to boost access to low cost treatment for millions of people in poor countries.
But medical charity Medicines Sans Frontieres criticised the agreement between drug company Gilead Sciences and the Medicines Patent Pool for excluding several middle-income countries like Brazil, China, the Philippines and Peru, which have significant numbers of people living with HIV.
Aid groups also condemned other pharmaceutical giants for not joining the pool.
The pool, which allows manufacturers of generic medicines to produce patented drugs under licence, was established last year to improve access to newer HIV/AIDS medicines in poor countries.
Around 33 million people worldwide have the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes AIDS. Most live in Africa and Asia, where medicines have to be very cheap for people to afford them.
Gilead is the first pharmaceutical company to license its drugs to the pool. The agreement will allow producers in India to make generic copies of its HIV drugs tenofovir, emtricitabine, cobicistat, and elvitegravir as well as a combination HIV pill known as the “Quad”. Cobicistat, elvitegravir and the Quad are still in clinical development.
MSF and the U.N. aids agency, UNAIDS, said the inclusion of products still under development was an important advance as it would speed up production of cheap generic versions of new medicines.
“People in developing countries often have to wait for years before they can access new health technologies,” said the Patent Pool’s executive director, Ellen 't Hoen. “Today’s agreement changed that.”
She said the pool was in discussions with several other pharmaceutical companies, but not Abbott Laboratories, Merck & Co and Johnson & Johnson, all of which make HIV drugs.
U.N. member states have set a target of increasing access to antiretroviral therapy to 15 million people by 2015.
An estimated 6.6 million people are currently on HIV treatments in low and middle-income countries, but a further 9 million are in need.
NO EXCUSE
The Gilead agreement also allows for new fixed-dose combinations and child-friendly medicines to be developed.
Oxfam estimated that the deal could benefit nearly all children living with HIV in poor countries and around 85 percent of people living with HIV in low and middle-income countries.
It said other companies now had no excuse for refusing to license their drugs to the pool.
Oxfam health policy adviser Mohga Kamal-Yanni said companies like ViiV that are already in discussions with the pool needed to get on board as fast as possible.
“Others, such as Abbott, which have so far failed to engage at all with the pool, should be ashamed of themselves and should start negotiations as soon as possible,” he said.
UNAIDS Executive Director Michel Sidibé said the deal marked a new era in the global HIV response with private and public sectors “working hand in hand for the best interests of public health”.
“I hope today’s announcement will inspire other pharmaceutical companies to follow suit to share intellectual property and innovation to make new technological advances in HIV treatment available sooner to the people that need them most.”
MSF also said it was vital that the other big companies join up so that manufacturers of generic drugs can produce more fixed-dose combinations (FDCs). Johnson & Johnson and Merck both make drugs used in FDCs.
Tido von Schoen-Angerer, director of MSF’s campaign for access to essential medicines, said FDCs helped patients adhere to their treatment and take the correct drugs in the right combinations. They also reduced the likelihood of HIV resistance developing.
“To really make this work we need the other companies to join up so that we have other drugs in the pool to develop fixed-dose combinations,” he added.
The licences will allow for the supply of tenofovir and emtricitabine in 111 countries, for cobicistat in 102 countries, and for elvitegravir and the Quad in 99 countries.
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