BEIJING, Sept 6 (AFP) - China may break patents on western AIDS drugs if talks with foreign pharmaceutical companies over cutting prices do not succeed by early next year, a top health official said Friday.
Although China wishes to respect foreign pharmaceutical patents, an agreement must be reached within the next few months, said Qi Xiaoqiu, head of the Department of Disease Control of the Ministry of Health.
"(Otherwise) we will have to take the other choice," he told a briefing in Beijing. "We cannot afford to wait any longer."
Qi said China currently has around a million people infected with the HIV virus, a figure that could increase ten-fold by the end of the decade if nothing is done to stop the epidemic.
China has been in talks for months with GlaxoSmithkline PLC, Bristol-Myers Squibb Co and Merck Co Inc., which already sell AIDS drugs in the country.
Chinese negotiators hope to persuade the companies to cut prices beyond reductions of up to 80 percent that they have already made this year.
"We believe that any government when facing a dilemma between profit, and the life and health of its people, should choose to protect the lives and health of its people," Qi said.
China made a pledge ten years ago to respect intellectual property rights in the pharmaceutical industry.
Several countries including Brazil and South Africa have used a provision under World Trade Organization rules that effectively allows members to produce cheap generic AIDS drugs and break the patents of foreign drugs companies.
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