Mr Clinton also announced that his foundation had negotiated steep price reductions for generic versions of costly, second-line Aids drugs needed when the original medicines fail, as well as for less toxic, easier-to-use first-line medicines combined in a once-a-day pill.
Standing next to Thailand’s Public Health Minister Mongkol Na Songkhla, Mr Clinton forcefully endorsed the decision to break patents held by US pharmaceutical companies charging prices the former president described as exorbitant.
‘‘No company will live or die because of high price premiums for Aids drugs in middle-income countries, but patients may,’’ he said.
The new prices would halve the cost of the drugs for better-off developing countries in Latin America and Asia and cut prices by 25% in poor countries, which were already paying lower prices, the foundation said.
The second-line medicines will be bought with more than $100 million (3.47 billion baht) raised by a group of countries led by France. The improved first-line therapies will largely be financed by the Global Fund to Fight Aids, tuberculosis and malaria and other donors.
Second-line drugs have typically cost about 10 times as much as first-line therapies. Costs have ballooned in Brazil and Thailand, which began programmes to provide universal access to Aids treatment years before African countries did, as patients have developed resistance to generic first-line treatments and moved to brand-name second-line drugs.
The Clinton Foundation’s willingness to buy the generic drugs from the Indian manufacturers Cipla and Matrix will give developing countries leverage in bargaining with American companies for lower prices on branded anti-retroviral drugs and may embolden some to follow Brazil and Thailand in overriding patents.
Speaking from New York, Dr Mongkol said he believed the support from the former US president was credible enough to clear doubts over the country’s motives in challenging the patents of drug firms.
It also boosted his own confidence as he prepares to address the issues of compulsory licensing and the downgrading of the country to the Priority Watch List by the US Office of Trade Representative in Washington on May 21 and 22.
Dr Mongkol said Thailand would also hold out against pressure for it to submit to US demands on several issues in exchange for an upgrade back.
These included permission to patent not only drugs but also diagnostic, therapeutic and surgical procedures for the treatment of humans or animals, which would inevitably force Thais to shoulder high medical treatment costs.
The US has also called for an extension of the patent protection on drugs and agricultural chemical products from two to four years, and compulsory licensing to be used only in emergency situations.
Dr Mongkol and his team travelled to New York early this week to sign an agreement with the Clinton Foundation to buy the generic versions of Aids medicine from India in bulk.
source:Bangkokpost
