AEGiS-AP: Brazilian AIDS Drugs to Be Exported

Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2001. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

Brazilian AIDS Drugs to Be Exported

Associated Press - Thursday September 13, 2001
Peter Muello, Associated Press Writer

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AP) - Doctors Without Borders plans to export to developing countries Brazil's controversial anti-AIDS program and AIDS drugs, including locally made copies of patented medicines. The international aid organization said Thursday it signed a pact this week with Brazilian health minister Jose Serra to send the initiative abroad. "We want to exploit Brazil's experience," said the group's spokesman, Juliano Borges. "The agreement includes human resources, technology and the drugs themselves."

The government distributes a "cocktail" of 12 AIDS drugs free to anyone who needs it. Although some 210,500 of Brazil's 170 million people have the disease, the annual number of AIDS deaths has fallen from 11,024 to 4,136 in just four years.

Some of the drugs are patented by foreign companies that Brazil says are too expensive to import. To reduce costs, the government makes eight of them at a laboratory in Rio.

Earlier this year, the United States dropped a complaint with the World Trade Organization over clauses in Brazilian law that allow patents to be stripped in cases of national emergency or when the company is believed to use abusive pricing.

Serra invoked that law last month when he announced that Brazil would make a generic version of the AIDS drug Nelfinavir, produced by Switzerland's Roche. He later withdrew the threat when Roche promised to slash its price by 40 percent. In March, drug company Merck Sharp & Dohme also agreed to reduce the price of two AIDS medications by 70 percent.

Borges said drug companies tried to block the agreement with Doctors Without Borders, and the two sides chose to omit details of what it will include. "It was a strategic retreat," he said. "With the pressure from the laboratories, the moment was too turbulent for a specific agreement." Doctors Without Borders, known in French as Medecins Sans Frontieres, runs more than 40 HIV or AIDS programs in 29 countries worldwide.
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