AEGiS-Bangkok Post: Compulsory Licensing: Aids drugs now available

Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2008. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

Compulsory Licensing: Aids drugs now available

Bangkok Post - May 8, 2008
Apiradee Treerutkuarkul

Second-line generic Aids drugs have already reached most HIV-positive patients as a direct result of the compulsory licensing (CL) policy, the National Health Security Office (NHSO) says. Delivery of the first batch of the generic version of the drug Kaletra, worth 21 million baht, to state hospitals throughout the country began in February, NHSO deputy secretary-general, Winai Sawasdiworn, said yesterday.

Speaking after a meeting with a sub-panel overseeing the Aids issue, he also said 153,776 bottles of another Aids drug, Efavirenz, which also comes in tablet form, had been imported from India, beginning in October last year.

As a result, patients listed for treatment with second-line drugs under the universal healthcare scheme could access both medications, he said.

He was responding to recent criticism from a group of HIV-positive homosexual men in Chiang Mai that the state had been sluggish in distributing the anti-viral medicines.

They wondered whether enough of the pills were being imported to meet the needs of all patients under the policy.

In the North, a total of 4,155 HIV-positive people who have developed resistance to the locally-made first-line drug GPO-VIR have so far received the second-line drugs, while 4,183 others are still waiting for them.

The previous government announced the introduction of CL to bypass the patented versions of both Aids medications in January 2007, saying the government could not afford the costly drugs to treat an estimated half a million people living with the fatal disease.

An estimated 100,000 HIV-positive people are dependent for survival on anti-Aids drugs, according to the Disease Control Department.

Of these, 12% are expected to develop resistance to first-line Aids drugs.

Wirat Poorahong, leader of the Network of People Living with HIV/Aids and a member of the NHSO sub-panel, said he has proposed the agency seek a bigger budget to increase the number of medical staff under the programme.

There are only 300 doctors authorised to change the drug regimen of an Aids patient and only 27 blood screening centres which can check for HIV.

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