Bangkok Post - July 15, 2004
Preeyanat Phanayanggoor, Apiradee Treerutkuarkul

Gaelle Kri Korian, a campaigner from Act Up Paris, which opposed the free trade agreement signed recently between Morocco and the US, said the Moroccan leader also publicly promised the same thing before entering into negotiations last year, but it turned out that patent protection was indeed part of the pact.

Under the agreement, all patents are to be made available for at least 20 years from the date of filing. This would limit access to cheaper medicines, particularly for people affected by the pandemic in developing countries, since the patents make these essential medicines expensive and therefore out of reach for many people.

Last week, Mr Thaksin promised that he would not allow stricter protection of intellectual property rights on drugs to be included in the Thai-US Free Trade Agreement (FTA).

Gaelle Kri Korian said that people should be sceptical until the details of the free trade negotiations were made available to the public.

"If the details of the FTA have not been made public, the promise means nothing," she told a forum at the 15th International Aids Conference.

The pro free-trade lobby has been drawing up a new strategy aimed at promoting their stance, which includes a plan to set up a network of countries that have sealed FTAs with the United States, or who are currently in negotiations, so that they could exchange information and help each other through the process.

During an earlier forum, Jiraporn Limpananont, an academic at Chulalongkorn University's faculty of pharmaceutical science, said the government's promise to produce cheap anti-retroviral therapies for HIV-positive people was a lie.

"I wonder if the prime minister's statement about providing locally-produced GPOVIR drugs for all HIV patients will come true in light of the current free trade negotiations with Washington," she said.

The government plans to provide GPOVIR, the drug produced by the Government Pharmaceutical Organisation, for 50,000 HIV-positive people by the end of the year. Mr Thaksin has promised to make the low-cost generic drug available to even more people in the future.

But these patients will face drug resistance and will need to take new and stronger medicines with higher doses to address the symptoms within a five-year period. However, these so-called "second-line" drugs still come under patents owned by giant pharmaceutical firms.

Should the government sign an agreement with the George W Bush administration, the patent rules in the US-Thai FTA would block the opportunity to use compulsory licensing to negotiate lower prices or authorise production of cheap generic medication to address not only Aids but also other illnesses, Dr Jiraporn said.

"What the government is trying to do behind closed doors is killing not only Aids patients, but also other poor patients who cannot afford to pay for patented drugs, which cost up to 10 times their regular income," she said.

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