Bangkok Post - Jul 23, 2001
Aphaluck Bhatiasevi

In its latest report entitled "Formula for Fairness: patient rights before patent rights" launched during the weekend in eight countries including Thailand, Oxfam said Pfizer used its position as "the most powerful" political lobbyist of the industry to encourage the US to threaten trade sanctions against poorer countries.

This report is the second in Oxfam's series of analyses on the human development impact of multinational corporations. "The company's bottom line seems to matter more than the lives of the world's poorest people," said Oxfam policy director Justin Forsyth.

The report says the multinational firm appears to adopt a uniform pricing strategy and its policy is not to issue licences to generic manufacturers. "The result is that its drugs are often priced beyond the means of poor people and their governments," Oxfam said, adding that diseases under control in developed countries cause millions of premature deaths in the developing world.

Limited access to life-saving drugs that were widely available in rich countries was an important factor, said the report, pointing out that unlike many of its competitors, Pfizer has not significantly cut the price of its branded drugs in the developing world despite mounting international pressure on drug companies.

Despite owning three important drugs for infectious diseases-the antifungal drug Diflucan, the antibiotic Zithromax, and the Aids anti-retroviral Viracept-Pfizer, unlike a number of its competitors, has shown little flexibility on pricing and patent enforcement in poor countries. Although Diflucan, generically known as fluconazole, is not patent protected in Thailand, Pfizer enjoyed the status by exclusively marketing it until three Thai companies began to produce the drugs in generic form in 1998, the report said.

"Pfizer then dropped its Diflucan price from US$7 (320 baht) per 200mg capsule to $3.60. Having regained market share helped by intensified marketing, Pfizer then raised its price back to $6.20-as of July 2001, it is priced at $5.15-per 200mg capsule, compared with the much lower generic prices of Biolab sold at 29 cents for the same dosage," the report said.

According to the report, the US government successfully pushed for the introduction of protection levels which exceed those contained in Trips (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights of the World Trade Organisation) in developing countries like Thailand, Vietnam, Jordan, Brazil and Egypt.

The agreement on Trips-the new 20-year patent regime the WTO requires all member states to implement-was likely to keep prices of vital new medicines higher than they would otherwise be, and this exacerbates the vast health disparity between rich and poor countries, the Oxfam report said.

Representatives of Pfizer were unavailable for comment yesterday.
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