Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2007. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Bangkok Post - August 25, 2007
The government has insisted the licences will save lives and that all CL moves will be considered carefully.
Vichai Chokevivat, a public health specialist chairing a committee looking into the government's CL policy, said yesterday that Novartis International AG told Public Health Minister Mongkol Na Songkhla that it would donate imatinib, under the Glivec brand, to meet demands of patients with chronic myeloid leukaemia (CML).
Earlier, Dr Vichai said the Public Health Ministry had planned to impose CL for the drug because most CML patients could not afford the treatment.
He also met representatives of the Food and Drug Administration, the ministries of foreign affairs, labour, commerce and sciences as well as Aids activists to discuss a recent written request from the US for Thailand to stop issuing compulsory licences.
The letter, dated July 20, was submitted to Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont by US ambassador Ralph Boyce.
According to Dr Vichai, the meeting resolved that the CL policy would continue because the government has a duty to ensure people have affordable access to medicine for treatment of serious diseases.
CLs are in line with the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (Trips) and the Doha Declaration which permits flexibility on patent rights for the sake of public health regardless of trade interests, he said.
Thailand says it will implement CLs only to save people's lives and not to reap commercial benefits, Dr Vichai added, arguing that some developed nations had issued more CLs than developing ones. "The US itself has widely issued CLs," he said.
He said the government was studying a proposal by Gilead Sciences Co that offered to charge a low royalty fee for production of the tenofovir antiretroviral drug for HIV-infected people who were also narcotic drug users and had hepatitis C.
He would pass on the meeting's conclusions to the public health minister and the prime minister.
Jon Ungpakorn of the Aids Access Foundation, who attended yesterday's meeting, said the government's stance was in line with international practice and was based on morality. CLs will save patients' lives because drugs will be more widely available to them, he said.
The death rate of Aids patients has dropped by 80% in the past five years thanks to availability of non-patented drugs but they now need patented and expensive drugs to cope with refractory illnesses, Mr Jon said.
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