Step To HIV Patent Pool
posted: 11/02/2011
The determined people campaigning for a patent pool to make HIV drugs available cheaply in developing countries are slowly getting results.
Unitaid works to improve access to medicines in developing countries and has set up the Geneva-based Medicines Patent Pool .
Sharing the patents of HIV drugs provides people in the developing world with cheap copies (‘generic’ versions of the drugs, rather than expensive brand name originals). Generic drug manufacturers in countries like India and China can then make legal cheap combinations of some of today's advanced HIV medicines.
2nd line generic treatments needed now
The world needs cheap combinations of new generic drugs to keep healthy and well the millions of people already talking treatments in the developing world, as HIV inevitably develops resistance to the basic drugs already being used.
Even GSK are now negotiating
But today, two months after sending out letters inviting the major makers of HIV drugs to add their patents on HIV drugs to the patent pool, it was announced that F. Hoffman-La Roche, Gilead Sciences, Sequoia Pharmaceuticals, and ViiV Healthcare (a joint venture of GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer) are about to start talking business.
The big surprise is Viiv Healthcare. GSK has always said it wasn't uninterested in pooling HIV patents. Its chief executive Andrew Witty, said they would do something else instead.
Viiv Healthcare has however now taken the first step by saying it is interested in joining the negotiations.
The Medicines Patent Pool has published the responses to the HIV drug patent pool invitation from all the companies, naming and shaming the less than enthusiastic companies with their own letters. They’ll update this every quarter. It will be worth watching to keep drug companies accountable to people with HIV.
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