G8, UN Must Act To Get New AIDS Drugs to Poor says MSF

June 29, 2005

Reuters
Robert Evans

GENEVA - Rich countries' governments and the World Health Organisation (WHO) must push for quick moves to ensure that the latest AIDS drugs can reach poorer nations at low cost, the MSF medical charity said on Wednesday.

MSF, or Medecins Sans Frontieres, said action -- such as compelling big pharmaceutical companies to licence manufacture of key medicines by firms in developing countries -- was vital to head off a looming supply and cost crisis.

"Access to newer drugs is increasingly critical as the growing number of people with HIV/AIDS currently on treatment will inevitably develop resistance to first-line treatments," MSF said in a statement issued in Geneva.

And it suggested that leaders of the Group of Eight (G8) industrial nations meeting in Scotland next week should back the idea of compulsory licencing -- allowing governments in poorer countries to break patents held by global firms.

The statement was issued as the WHO reported that although a million people in developing countries are receiving life-saving AIDS medication it was unlikely to reach its goal of getting three times that number on treatment by the end of 2005.

MSF, which currently provides anti-retroviral (ARV) treatments to some 35,000 AIDS sufferers in about 30 countries, said it was having to pay "exorbitant prices" to companies who were the patent holders of newer drugs.

In the latest edition of its AIDS drug-pricing guide, MSF said the prices of second-line drugs were six to 12 times higher than those of older treatments in the world's 49 least developed countries (LDCs) and in all of sub-Saharan Africa.

MILLIONS NEED NEW DRUGS

Many of the one million people under treatment and of the remaining 5.5 million still without ARVs in developing countries today, even if they eventually get them, will need access to the newer treatments within the next few years, MSF said.

"It is urgent to address how high the final drug bill will be in a few years time, and who will foot it," MSF AIDS specialist Felipe Garcia de la Vega said.

Although the G8 nations are discussing ensuring universal access to ARVs, "this will remain an impossible goal if prices continue to soar," he declared.

"It is vital that governments and international organisations like the WHO take and encourage immediate steps -- such as compulsory licencing -- that allow countries to make or import more affordable generics (copies)."

Brazil, which has a major AIDS treatment programme and a growing domestic pharmaceutical industry, this week issued its first-ever compulsory licence order on the U.S. firm Abbott Laboratories Inc for production of an ARV drug.

Brazil's health minister Humberto Costa said the drug, which like all other AIDS treatments will be delivered to sufferers in the country free of charge, could be produced at 68 cents a pill against the $1.17 it is currently paying Abbott.

MSF said the current pricing system for ARVs, under which the big global firms give voluntary discounts to the poorest developing countries, "is not sufficient to guarantee affordability of medicines now or in the future."

The companies were not producing enough drugs suitable for children, some medications made only by one firm were still very expensive despite the discounts, and many drugs were not distributed in all countries needing them.

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