New Analysis:
ViiV Licenses vs. the Patent Pool: Unanswered Questions and Unwarranted Antipathy | read more
Health GAP Policy Analysis: Making a Mistake on Treatment – PEPFAR’s New Five-Year AIDS Strategy
by Brook K. Baker, Feb. 5, 2010
Abstract: Just when testing trends are so positive, just when the costs of medicines have plummeted to new lows, and just as scientific modeling and research shows that treatment reduces the risk of HIV transmission, funding – the lifeblood of AIDS programming – is being capped both by donor countries and their partners in the developing world that are suffering the worst of the global recession. As a result, people are beginning to stand in line and to die in that line while waiting for treatment.
Solemn promises to achieve universal access have been made repeatedly over the past 5 years, including by President Obama and other U.S. leaders, but the world is currently treating only 30% of those in need of treatment under new WHO treatment guidelines. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria is rationing funding to meritorious applications and is running out of funds for new proposals. U.S. commitments to Global AIDS have been essentially flat-lined in FY 2009 and 2010 budgets and now in the proposed FY 2011 budget. That flat funding has a cost, and the cost is that twice as many PWAs will die under the PEPFAR Five Year strategy than would die under a universal access scenario.
AIDS treatment has had dramatic success in extending and improving lives in both rich countries and poor. It has also created positive synergies for other health services, it has rewarded people for knowing their status, and it has spawned the most powerful movement for global health justice the world has ever known. Given evidence of the impact of early treatment and lower viral loads on reducing the risks of horizontal and vertical transmission, treatment can also be a key component to comprehensive prevention – to actually reversing the tide of infection.
People are playing the blame game in a concerted backlash against HIV/AIDS programming and treatment in particular. And they are complaining about inadequate resources even as we spend trillions on financial sector bailouts and military adventures. There is more than enough to increase FY 2011 appropriations to $7.25 billion and to increase U.S. spending on its Global Health Initiative from $63 billion to $95 billion as demanded by a coalition of health activists in the U.S. Untreated, our brothers and sisters will die – with modest and pragmatic increases in funding and programming, the delayed goal of universal access to comprehensive HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment, and care can be reached.
Full analysis here, or click here to download as a PDF.
Analysis of the Indian Mashelkar Committee Report on Patents
The Mashelkar Committee has misinterpreted India’s flexibility under international law to limit patents of pharmaceutical products to new chemical entities, or new medical entity involving one or more inventive steps [NCEs]. Although it has slightly modified and extended its analysis, it has made three fundamental mistakes. | More
Drug Companies' new proposals to "improve access to medicine"
Health GAP's Board co-Chair Brook Baker provides analysis on Big Pharma's new offensive to have its research on neglected diseases subsidized while still protecting and even extending intellectual property rights worldwide. Although three separate proposals, the Pogge/Hollis Health Impact Fund, the GlaxoSmithKline "Big Pharma A Catalyst for Change" proposals, and the Barton/Pfizer "New International Framework" proposal, all promise to reduce drug prices for the poorest countries and to expand research on neglected diseases , all three basically preclude robust generic competition across a broad range of medicines and seek to perpetuate ironclad patent and drug data monopolies. These crafty proposals all seek favorable publicity for Big Pharma while avoiding more fundamental challenges to an intellectual property regime that prioritizes drug company profits over life-saving access to lower-priced medicines of assured quality. In particular, they detract attention from more radical proposals that would separate incentives and markets for innovation from competitive markets that maximize access.
2007 Victories: Fewer Deaths and More Compulsory Licenses
Activists have long claimed that access to medicines campaigns set precedents that have a snowball effect. What we are now seeing, given India's victory against Novartis in the drug company's challenge to section 3d of the India Patent Act and given Thailand's highly publicized campaign to issue compulsory licenses on both AIDS and heart disease medicines, is a new wave of patent withdrawals and a growing wave of compulsory licenses. This reciprocal wave action creates a wider opening for continuing access to newer and lower costs medicines. But the promise of this opening will only be realized if more countries amend their patent acts to take advantage of the TRIPS-compliant, definitional flexibilities that India has enacted and if more countries use the TRIPS-compliant flexibilities
for issuing compulsory licenses for generic medicines that Thailand has used. | read article
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