Thailand Issues Compulsory Licenses for Kaletra and Plavix

Compulsory Licenses for AIDS drug Kaletra (LPV+RTV) and heart disease drug Plavix (clopidogrel bisulfate) have recently been signed into Thailand Legislation. Thailand’s Health Minister Mongkol na Songkhla told press “We have to do this because we have so much patients to treat with so little budget. We can’t watch our people die and their patents have been here for so long.”

Under WTO TRIPS regulation, countries are free to define threats to public health as national emergencies and introduce compulsory licenses into their legislation in the case of an extreme urgency without having to first negotiate with the patent holder for a voluntary license.

Two months after the September military coup removed Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra from office, the interim government moved to issue Thailand’s first compulsory license for anti-retroviral Efaviranz. Despite international pressure to remove the license, Thailand has pushed forward and issued two more licenses for Abbott’s Kaletra, and Sanofi-Aventis/Bristol-Myers Squibbs’s Plavix

According the Paul Hawthorne, head of Doctors Without Borders in Thailand, Bangkok was spending 11,580 baht ($330) per patient per month for Kaletra and could cut its bill by two thirds if it switched to a generic manufacturer.

Furthermore, according to a new WHO report, “Heart disease, stroke and diabetes alone are estimated to reduce the gross domestic product by between 1% and 5% per year in low and middle income countries experiencing rapid economic growth.”

posted by Anne on 01.25.07 @ 3:28 pm

http://ipnewsblog.com/index.php/2007/01/25/thailand-issues-compulsory-licenses-for-kaletra-and-plavix/