fdt
06-28-2005, 02:49 AM
This is a matter of life and death. At current prices cost of a year long treatment with Kaletra (medicine manufactured by US company Abbot) is circa 2600$ per person while Brazilian govt (based on WHO independent estimates) the fair price for such a therapy is 480-540$ per year/per person.
Brazil's Successful Anti-AIDS Efforts Set to Expand
By Mario Osava, Inter Press Service
December 26, 2001
<snip>
In 2002, Brazil will put a greater emphasis on research and development
of a vaccine, and on foreign cooperation, especially with Africa, after
gaining international recognition this year for its anti-HIV/AIDS
programme and new victories for its contention that drug patents can be
waived in cases of public health emergencies.
By supplying anti-retroviral drugs to nearly 105,000 HIV/AIDS patients,
Brazil has cut mortality among AIDS victims in half, and hospital
admissions by 80 percent, since 1996. Due to the programme's marked
success, it will be expanded next year.
The goal of health authorities for the year 2002 is to expand coverage
in regions where care continues to fall short, like the impoverished
north and northeast, said Granjeiro.
<snip>
Another objective is to improve the early diagnosis system. Most of the
597,000 people living with HIV or full-blown AIDS in Brazil - as
estimated by local health authorities - are unaware that they are
infected, or only realise it once the symptoms appear, which favours the
spread of the disease.
<snip>
He [Eloan Pinheiro, director of Far-Manguinhos] reported that two ''new
families of molecules'' that could improve treatment - one of them
especially useful in cases of resistant viruses - were created and are
undergoing trials. If they are found to be effective, the patents will
be public in nature, and drug industries in any country will be able to
freely produce them.
However, that will take at least five years, because the process is a
slow one, and new research and more expensive testing are needed before
the new drugs can be approved, he said.
The research and development carried out in Far-Manguinhos puts Brazil's
Health Ministry in a strong bargaining position for negotiating a
reduction in the prices of pharmaceuticals, even in cases in which
patents are respected.
<snip>
The health minister's threat paved the way for negotiations that led to
a 40 to 70 percent reduction in the prices of two anti- retroviral drugs
this year. A third anti-AIDS drug, Kaletra, produced by the
transnational giant Abbot, is the new target of the same strategy.
<snip>
Far-Manguinhos also plays a key role in the international cooperation
strategy of Brazil, which offers technology and training to countries
interested in manufacturing their own anti- AIDS drugs.
Angola, for example, will expand its production thanks to the
construction of a pharmaceutical factory built with aid from Brazil.
This country has also provided assistance to other parts of Africa,
especially Portuguese-speaking nations.
What is the Brazilian tactics?
Brazil Takes Step Toward Breaking AIDS Patents
BRASILIA, Brazil (*******) - Brazil has moved a step closer to breaking AIDS drug patents by asking U.S. companies for the right to copy four products so the country can slash health costs, the government said on Tuesday.
Brazil requested Bristol-Myers Squibb's, Abbot Laboratories Inc. and Gilead Sciences Inc. to grant "voluntary licensing" of drug technology so it can keep its much-copied AIDS program afloat, the health ministry said.
Brazil imports the four drugs used in its free, combination antiretroviral drug treatment. It wants to make copies and pay royalties.
The products in question are Merck's efavirenz, Abbott's lopinavir and ritonavir, and Gilead's tenofovir.
"We expect to cut by half what we currently pay," the ministry's health control secretary, Jarbas Barbosa, said in a statement on the request sent on Monday.
Brazil has often threatened to break drug patents unless foreign manufacturers slash costs.
Latin America's largest country now says it can no longer afford to import AIDS drugs and must become self-sufficient.
Under Brazilian law, and based on World Trade Organization rules, a nation can break drug patents by applying a "compulsory license" on a product if it is a case of national emergency or national interest.
That would mean Brazil would begin domestic manufacture of products without permission. It would still pay royalties.
"[U.S. companies] know we are talking seriously of applying a compulsory license," Barbosa said.
Company officials in Brazil and the United States were not immediately available for comment.
In the 1990s experts expected more than 1 million Brazilians to develop AIDS by 2000. Brazil began free access to its antiretroviral combination therapy in 1997 and has kept the number of people living with HIV at around 600,000.
The government expects to increase the number of Brazilians on AIDS drugs to 180,000 in 2005 from 150,000 in 2004.
The cost of providing foreign imports of antiretroviral drugs in the combination has skyrocketed from 50% of the program's budget in 1998 to an estimated 85% in 2005.
Brazil makes 8 of the 16 drugs in the combination therapy and hopes to begin manufacture of more in the first half of 2005.
The country lacks pharmaceutical industry technology and capacity to manufacture all 16 drugs.
03/18/05
What "poor" pharmaceutical companies do faced that tactics? They buy an "independent" specialist who does the whinning for the ears of Western policy makers... :oops:
Brazil's dangerous denial
By Roger Bate Published 06/27/2005
http://www.techcentralstation.com/062705F.html
When is a life-saving intervention somebody else's responsibility? From the example of Brazil, the answer seems to be: When it's expensive.
Brazilian Health Minister Humberto Costa has declared that the price of a new anti-retroviral drug developed by Abbott Laboratories of Chicago is so high that it is a risk to public health. He has given Abbott until the end of this week to offer an acceptable price or Brazil will start producing a generic drug at a state-run laboratory in Rio de Janeiro, according to BBC News online.
The threat is credible, and it unfortunately appears to be legal under the World Trade Organization's Doha Declaration (an amendment to the WTO's TRIPS agreement on trade-related intellectual property rights). That declaration was designed to allow for compulsory licensing and parallel importing of patented drugs in health emergencies in poor countries. Anti-retroviral virus treatment for HIV was the main impetus for this initiative and so this drug, Kaletra, falls within its realm. Abbott is already supplying drugs to Brazil at a loss, so there is every reason to expect the company to give away the drug rather than giving up the exclusive right to produce it, and have Brazil establish a worrying precedent.
Initially, this process may seem to be a triumph of fair play. But those with a longer view may draw parallels with the goose that laid the golden eggs.
Abbott is a private company; it funds its own research and, crucially, the onerous regulatory process required to register a drug, as do all pharmaceutical companies. The average cost of bringing a drug to market is $860 million. These costs are funded by the profits from successful products, and few can expect a Viagra to land in their laps (as it were).
If it can't cover even its costs for drug development, any drug company can not reasonably be blamed for losing enthusiasm for developing any more anti-retrovirals or, indeed, anything else that might be deemed by a health bureaucrat to be essential to public health. And my own research shows that there are 27% fewer companies working on AIDS research since 1997. Brazil's threats will only hurry more companies away from this largely unprofitable enterprise.
The principle of Brazil's action seems to be: "You will give up your property if I really need it." But has anybody really thought this through? Should that approach apply to anything? In all other areas of human interaction, there are laws against that sort of thing.
Brazil has won praise internationally for providing free anti-retroviral drugs to anyone who needs them, but if it carries out its threat it will have requisitioned a newly-developed product in which it has invested nothing. In the meantime, it also will collect revenue for its program from tariffs on other drugs, which in effect denies others access to the medicines they need. Brazil ordinarily imposes an 8.8% tariff on drug imports, a policy that has profited Brazil's treasury. Waiving the tariff for high-profile HIV drugs demonstrates that this practice is hard to defend, yet it continues.
There are 183 million people in Brazil; 600,000 are estimated by the health ministry to have HIV/AIDS. Not all will need anti-retrovirals, but many may require more immediate treatment for opportunistic infections such as tuberculosis - even if the TB drug imports have tariffs slapped on them.
Meanwhile, Brazil has an even more basic requirement for life and health for which it lacks a comprehensive plan. Some 43 million Brazilians currently do not even receive water supply services, never mind sewage treatment, Olivio Dutra, the Minister of Cities, told an UNCTAD meeting in September 2004.
Water-borne diseases are an immediate threat to life and the worst affected are children. Brazil's infant mortality rate of 30 deaths per 1,000 live births is 50% higher than Mexico's and more than four times that of the United States.
So clearly, there is much to be done. And Brazil wants outside for assistance. And, so far, it's gotten it.
The Inter-American Development Bank has pledged $95 billion to Brazil over the next 10 years to assist in water supply and treatment costs. The lenders include European countries, Canada, Israel and Japan, with the United States being a 30% shareholder.
Now, nobody's expecting countries to grovel in gratitude, but Brazil's belligerent attitude in snapping at and biting the very hand that feeds it - while a recognisable human trait - has begun to grate. What would the world think if the U.S. government pulled support from these efforts if Brazil continues to threaten its drug companies?
Brazil is in dangerous denial. It denies responsibility for paying for HIV drugs and responsibility over letting its poorest die from entirely preventable water-borne disease. Only those who want fewer HIV drugs can welcome Brazil's actions, everyone else should be worried.
Dr Roger Bate is a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute
Talking of sensitivity to 3rd world problems... What is West doing to make the poor peoples access to modern medicines easier? It's Brazil who sponsors building the drug factories in Africa... But.... whatever, it's easier to blame the pope from Rome for he prevents poor Africans from using the condoms...
Condoms would certainly "help" to solve another Africa's plague - rapes (as it's one of the most "popular" way to spread HIV virus)... :cantbeli:
Democratic Republic of Congo: Mass rape - time for
remedies
INTRODUCTION
In the course of the armed conflict in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), tens of thousands of women and girls have
been victims of systematic rape and ****** assault committed by combatant forces. Women and girls have been attacked in their
homes, in the fields or as they go about their daily activities. Many have been raped more than once or have suffered gang rapes. In
many cases, women and young girls have been taken as *** slaves by combatants. Rape of men and boys has also taken place.
Rape has often been preceded or followed by the deliberate wounding, torture (including torture of ****** nature) or killing of the
victim. Rapes have been committed in public and in front of family members, including children. Some women have been raped next
to the corpses of family members.
The civilian population of eastern DRC has been the victim of war crimes and grave human rights violations on a daily basis. They
have seen combatants from around 20 armed factions fighting for control of the land and its resources. In a context of the collapse
of state authority in the east, national and international laws are no longer observed and all the armed factions have perpetrated and
continue to perpetrate ****** violence with impunity. Rape has been used deliberately and strategically to attack the fundamental
values of the community, to terrorize and humiliate those suspected of supporting an enemy group and to impose the supremacy of
one group over another.
In addition to the trauma of rape, survivors’ rights are further violated in the aftermath of the rape, deepening their suffering
immeasurably. Most women suffering injuries or illnesses caused by the rape – some of them life-threatening - are denied the
medical care they need. Because of prejudice, many women are abandoned by their husbands and excluded by their communities,
condemning them and their children to extreme poverty. Because of an incapacitated judicial system, there is no justice or redress
for the crimes they have endured. Continuing insecurity means that women live in fear of further attacks or reprisals if they speak out
against the perpetrators.
more here
http://www.kongo-kinshasa.de/dokumente/ngo/ai_1004_1_en.pdf
Brazil's Successful Anti-AIDS Efforts Set to Expand
By Mario Osava, Inter Press Service
December 26, 2001
<snip>
In 2002, Brazil will put a greater emphasis on research and development
of a vaccine, and on foreign cooperation, especially with Africa, after
gaining international recognition this year for its anti-HIV/AIDS
programme and new victories for its contention that drug patents can be
waived in cases of public health emergencies.
By supplying anti-retroviral drugs to nearly 105,000 HIV/AIDS patients,
Brazil has cut mortality among AIDS victims in half, and hospital
admissions by 80 percent, since 1996. Due to the programme's marked
success, it will be expanded next year.
The goal of health authorities for the year 2002 is to expand coverage
in regions where care continues to fall short, like the impoverished
north and northeast, said Granjeiro.
<snip>
Another objective is to improve the early diagnosis system. Most of the
597,000 people living with HIV or full-blown AIDS in Brazil - as
estimated by local health authorities - are unaware that they are
infected, or only realise it once the symptoms appear, which favours the
spread of the disease.
<snip>
He [Eloan Pinheiro, director of Far-Manguinhos] reported that two ''new
families of molecules'' that could improve treatment - one of them
especially useful in cases of resistant viruses - were created and are
undergoing trials. If they are found to be effective, the patents will
be public in nature, and drug industries in any country will be able to
freely produce them.
However, that will take at least five years, because the process is a
slow one, and new research and more expensive testing are needed before
the new drugs can be approved, he said.
The research and development carried out in Far-Manguinhos puts Brazil's
Health Ministry in a strong bargaining position for negotiating a
reduction in the prices of pharmaceuticals, even in cases in which
patents are respected.
<snip>
The health minister's threat paved the way for negotiations that led to
a 40 to 70 percent reduction in the prices of two anti- retroviral drugs
this year. A third anti-AIDS drug, Kaletra, produced by the
transnational giant Abbot, is the new target of the same strategy.
<snip>
Far-Manguinhos also plays a key role in the international cooperation
strategy of Brazil, which offers technology and training to countries
interested in manufacturing their own anti- AIDS drugs.
Angola, for example, will expand its production thanks to the
construction of a pharmaceutical factory built with aid from Brazil.
This country has also provided assistance to other parts of Africa,
especially Portuguese-speaking nations.
What is the Brazilian tactics?
Brazil Takes Step Toward Breaking AIDS Patents
BRASILIA, Brazil (*******) - Brazil has moved a step closer to breaking AIDS drug patents by asking U.S. companies for the right to copy four products so the country can slash health costs, the government said on Tuesday.
Brazil requested Bristol-Myers Squibb's, Abbot Laboratories Inc. and Gilead Sciences Inc. to grant "voluntary licensing" of drug technology so it can keep its much-copied AIDS program afloat, the health ministry said.
Brazil imports the four drugs used in its free, combination antiretroviral drug treatment. It wants to make copies and pay royalties.
The products in question are Merck's efavirenz, Abbott's lopinavir and ritonavir, and Gilead's tenofovir.
"We expect to cut by half what we currently pay," the ministry's health control secretary, Jarbas Barbosa, said in a statement on the request sent on Monday.
Brazil has often threatened to break drug patents unless foreign manufacturers slash costs.
Latin America's largest country now says it can no longer afford to import AIDS drugs and must become self-sufficient.
Under Brazilian law, and based on World Trade Organization rules, a nation can break drug patents by applying a "compulsory license" on a product if it is a case of national emergency or national interest.
That would mean Brazil would begin domestic manufacture of products without permission. It would still pay royalties.
"[U.S. companies] know we are talking seriously of applying a compulsory license," Barbosa said.
Company officials in Brazil and the United States were not immediately available for comment.
In the 1990s experts expected more than 1 million Brazilians to develop AIDS by 2000. Brazil began free access to its antiretroviral combination therapy in 1997 and has kept the number of people living with HIV at around 600,000.
The government expects to increase the number of Brazilians on AIDS drugs to 180,000 in 2005 from 150,000 in 2004.
The cost of providing foreign imports of antiretroviral drugs in the combination has skyrocketed from 50% of the program's budget in 1998 to an estimated 85% in 2005.
Brazil makes 8 of the 16 drugs in the combination therapy and hopes to begin manufacture of more in the first half of 2005.
The country lacks pharmaceutical industry technology and capacity to manufacture all 16 drugs.
03/18/05
What "poor" pharmaceutical companies do faced that tactics? They buy an "independent" specialist who does the whinning for the ears of Western policy makers... :oops:
Brazil's dangerous denial
By Roger Bate Published 06/27/2005
http://www.techcentralstation.com/062705F.html
When is a life-saving intervention somebody else's responsibility? From the example of Brazil, the answer seems to be: When it's expensive.
Brazilian Health Minister Humberto Costa has declared that the price of a new anti-retroviral drug developed by Abbott Laboratories of Chicago is so high that it is a risk to public health. He has given Abbott until the end of this week to offer an acceptable price or Brazil will start producing a generic drug at a state-run laboratory in Rio de Janeiro, according to BBC News online.
The threat is credible, and it unfortunately appears to be legal under the World Trade Organization's Doha Declaration (an amendment to the WTO's TRIPS agreement on trade-related intellectual property rights). That declaration was designed to allow for compulsory licensing and parallel importing of patented drugs in health emergencies in poor countries. Anti-retroviral virus treatment for HIV was the main impetus for this initiative and so this drug, Kaletra, falls within its realm. Abbott is already supplying drugs to Brazil at a loss, so there is every reason to expect the company to give away the drug rather than giving up the exclusive right to produce it, and have Brazil establish a worrying precedent.
Initially, this process may seem to be a triumph of fair play. But those with a longer view may draw parallels with the goose that laid the golden eggs.
Abbott is a private company; it funds its own research and, crucially, the onerous regulatory process required to register a drug, as do all pharmaceutical companies. The average cost of bringing a drug to market is $860 million. These costs are funded by the profits from successful products, and few can expect a Viagra to land in their laps (as it were).
If it can't cover even its costs for drug development, any drug company can not reasonably be blamed for losing enthusiasm for developing any more anti-retrovirals or, indeed, anything else that might be deemed by a health bureaucrat to be essential to public health. And my own research shows that there are 27% fewer companies working on AIDS research since 1997. Brazil's threats will only hurry more companies away from this largely unprofitable enterprise.
The principle of Brazil's action seems to be: "You will give up your property if I really need it." But has anybody really thought this through? Should that approach apply to anything? In all other areas of human interaction, there are laws against that sort of thing.
Brazil has won praise internationally for providing free anti-retroviral drugs to anyone who needs them, but if it carries out its threat it will have requisitioned a newly-developed product in which it has invested nothing. In the meantime, it also will collect revenue for its program from tariffs on other drugs, which in effect denies others access to the medicines they need. Brazil ordinarily imposes an 8.8% tariff on drug imports, a policy that has profited Brazil's treasury. Waiving the tariff for high-profile HIV drugs demonstrates that this practice is hard to defend, yet it continues.
There are 183 million people in Brazil; 600,000 are estimated by the health ministry to have HIV/AIDS. Not all will need anti-retrovirals, but many may require more immediate treatment for opportunistic infections such as tuberculosis - even if the TB drug imports have tariffs slapped on them.
Meanwhile, Brazil has an even more basic requirement for life and health for which it lacks a comprehensive plan. Some 43 million Brazilians currently do not even receive water supply services, never mind sewage treatment, Olivio Dutra, the Minister of Cities, told an UNCTAD meeting in September 2004.
Water-borne diseases are an immediate threat to life and the worst affected are children. Brazil's infant mortality rate of 30 deaths per 1,000 live births is 50% higher than Mexico's and more than four times that of the United States.
So clearly, there is much to be done. And Brazil wants outside for assistance. And, so far, it's gotten it.
The Inter-American Development Bank has pledged $95 billion to Brazil over the next 10 years to assist in water supply and treatment costs. The lenders include European countries, Canada, Israel and Japan, with the United States being a 30% shareholder.
Now, nobody's expecting countries to grovel in gratitude, but Brazil's belligerent attitude in snapping at and biting the very hand that feeds it - while a recognisable human trait - has begun to grate. What would the world think if the U.S. government pulled support from these efforts if Brazil continues to threaten its drug companies?
Brazil is in dangerous denial. It denies responsibility for paying for HIV drugs and responsibility over letting its poorest die from entirely preventable water-borne disease. Only those who want fewer HIV drugs can welcome Brazil's actions, everyone else should be worried.
Dr Roger Bate is a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute
Talking of sensitivity to 3rd world problems... What is West doing to make the poor peoples access to modern medicines easier? It's Brazil who sponsors building the drug factories in Africa... But.... whatever, it's easier to blame the pope from Rome for he prevents poor Africans from using the condoms...
Condoms would certainly "help" to solve another Africa's plague - rapes (as it's one of the most "popular" way to spread HIV virus)... :cantbeli:
Democratic Republic of Congo: Mass rape - time for
remedies
INTRODUCTION
In the course of the armed conflict in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), tens of thousands of women and girls have
been victims of systematic rape and ****** assault committed by combatant forces. Women and girls have been attacked in their
homes, in the fields or as they go about their daily activities. Many have been raped more than once or have suffered gang rapes. In
many cases, women and young girls have been taken as *** slaves by combatants. Rape of men and boys has also taken place.
Rape has often been preceded or followed by the deliberate wounding, torture (including torture of ****** nature) or killing of the
victim. Rapes have been committed in public and in front of family members, including children. Some women have been raped next
to the corpses of family members.
The civilian population of eastern DRC has been the victim of war crimes and grave human rights violations on a daily basis. They
have seen combatants from around 20 armed factions fighting for control of the land and its resources. In a context of the collapse
of state authority in the east, national and international laws are no longer observed and all the armed factions have perpetrated and
continue to perpetrate ****** violence with impunity. Rape has been used deliberately and strategically to attack the fundamental
values of the community, to terrorize and humiliate those suspected of supporting an enemy group and to impose the supremacy of
one group over another.
In addition to the trauma of rape, survivors’ rights are further violated in the aftermath of the rape, deepening their suffering
immeasurably. Most women suffering injuries or illnesses caused by the rape – some of them life-threatening - are denied the
medical care they need. Because of prejudice, many women are abandoned by their husbands and excluded by their communities,
condemning them and their children to extreme poverty. Because of an incapacitated judicial system, there is no justice or redress
for the crimes they have endured. Continuing insecurity means that women live in fear of further attacks or reprisals if they speak out
against the perpetrators.
more here
http://www.kongo-kinshasa.de/dokumente/ngo/ai_1004_1_en.pdf