Date: 21 January 2011
Source:
www.pharmalot.com
Link: http://www.pharmalot.com/2011/01/us-tells-the-who-to-support-a-patent-pool/
A year after UNITAID approved an international patent
pool to bolster access to needed HIV and AIDS meds in developing countries (read here), the US government has
gotten behind the initiative and is now urging the World Health Organization to
embrace the concept.
The move, which comes three months after the National Institutes of Health
signed on by licensing a drug (back story), was disclosed in this statement
delivered earlier this week by Nils Daulaire, director of the Office of Global Health Affairs at the US Department of Health
and Human Services, who was speaking to the WHO’s executive board.
In his remarks, Daulaire noted that differential pricing “does not always have
the impact on the pricing of medicines that robust generic competition does,
but the patent pool “aims to enhance competition to bring down the prices in
developing countries…and can also encourage needed new innovation, especially
to help treat children and create fixed-dose combinations necessary to scaling
up and improving HIV treatment in resource poor settings.”
Certainly, US backing is a significant step for those who believe the patent
pool is a needed and workable idea, especially if this move encourages the WHO
to act similarly. On the other hand, the pharmaceutical industry has yet to
embrace the notion. In fact, a group of non-profit organizations last month
sent letters to several large drugmakers in hopes of urging them to act (see
this). So far, though, no announcements have been forthcoming.
The Medicines Patent Pool is designed to streamline patent licensing for
producing generic versions of patented HIV treatments and lower prices for meds
in countries where people are unable to afford the drugs. Drugmakers would
place patents for HIV meds into a pool that could
be licensed to select generic makers, which would pay inventors a small royalty
and sell copycats only in certain developing countries.
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