Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2007. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Bangkok Post - May 11, 2007
Apiradee Treerutkuarkul
He was referring to the American NGO's action in placing full page advertisements in local newspapers yesterday and today.
The executive director of USA for Innovation, Ken Adelman, is a senior counsellor for Edelman Public Relations, which reportedly works for several drug firms.
"Information shown in the ad is completely misleading and baseless," Mr Jon said. The issuing of compulsory licences by the government was totally in line with the World Trade Organisation's rules.
In the advertisement, USA for Innovation says Thailand refused American and European technology at the expense of the poor and sick of Thailand. It also claimed that most Thai people living with HIV/Aids had no access to quality medicines.
It cited a study by Mahidol University stating that the locally-made anti-Aids drug GPO-VIR had between 39.6% and 58% resistance, one of the worst cases of HIV drug resistance in the world.
Government Pharmaceutical Organisation (GPO) deputy director Wanchai Supachaturas said the information presented in the advertisements was wrong. GPO-VIR's resistance rate was about 20%, which was regarded as normal.
HIV-positive people depending on first-line anti-retroviral treatment usually experienced resistance after a few years of use, and then it was necessary to change to a second-line drug.
Mr Wanchai also said he was not acknowledged in the university's study because the official researchers on drug resistance for the GPO and the public health minister were Siriraj Hospital and the Thai Red Cross.
The Public Health Ministry says about 500,000 Thais are living with HIV/Aids. Of these, about 100,000 depend on anti-Aids drugs.
An estimated 20,000 new cases are put on the list of those receiving medicinal treatment from state healthcare schemes every year.
Jiraporn Limpananont, of Chulalongkorn University's faculty of pharmaceutical science, believed the strategy of putting adverts in English-language newspapers was aimed at reaching a group of educated people and some business groups, particularly shrimp and jewellery exporters, which depend on the Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) from the US.
She called on the Commerce Ministry's Department of Intellectual Property not to submit to US demands on several issues, such as patenting on diagnostic and surgical procedures, in exchange for taking Thailand off the Priority Watch List during discussions with US representatives on intellectual property rights today.
The US wants an extension of the patent protection on drugs and agricultural chemical products from two to four years, and that compulsory licensing be used only in emergency situations.
070511
BP070509
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