OXFAM TAKES ON PHARMACEUTICAL GIANT NOVARTIS
(14 November 2006)

Oxfam has taken on the pharmaceutical giant Novartis in its latest campaign of putting patients before patents. Oxfam activists demand that developing countries are granted the right to produce affordable medicines. On 14 November 2006, activists recreated a hospital ward in Victoria, Central London, posing as patients who have been diagnosed ‘too poor for medicines’. The activists are asking world leaders and giant pharmaceuticals companies to stop denying poor people access to lifesaving medicines.

In fact, 14 November 2006 marks the fifth anniversary of the “Doha Declaration”, a formal trade declaration signed by world leaders to put health before profits. Today, during a high-level panel debate in London, Oxfam released a new report, “Patents vs. Patients: Five Years After the Doha Declaration”; the report states that rich countries are taking little or no action towards their obligations to help poor countries protect public health and are in some cases actually undermining the declaration.

DOHA DECLARATION ON TRIPS

The Doha Declaration on the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Right (TRIPS) Agreement and Public Health was adopted by all the members of the World Trade Organisation on 14th November 2001. It was a victory for developing countries, because it said that developing countries must be able to use public health safeguards written into the WTO’s intellectual property rules (called TRIPS) in order to access cheaper generic versions of patented medicines. For example, countries can look for the best price to import a branded from another country and not directly from a pharmaceutical company in the interests of public health. Also, generic competition is the most sustainable way to keep the price of medicines down, says Oxfam.

Instead, five years on after the Declaration, poor people in developing countries are still suffering and dying because they cannot access essential and lifesaving medicines. Rich countries, and the US in particular, are complicit in pharmaceutical companies’ attempts to block production of cheaper versions of their medicines in developing countries. They also actively push free trade agreements, which will enforce much stricter patent and related intellectual property rules that violate the promises made in Doha.

“Rich countries have broken the spirit of the Doha Declaration,” said Oxfam’s Make Trade Fair campaign head Celine Charveriat. “The declaration said the right things but needed political action to work. That hasn’t happened. We’ve gone backwards. People are still suffering or dying needlessly.”

LEGAL CHALLENGE TO PRODUCE ANTI-CANCER DRUG

In 2005, cancer patients groups in India used intellectual property law to stop a patent application by the Swiss company Novartis for its anti cancer drug, Glivec. This meant that Indian companies could continue making generic versions of Glivec at £1,400 per year, as opposed to the Novartis monopoly priced version of the same drug for sale at more than £14,000 per year.

However Novartis recently appealed the court’s decision in a direct challenge to India’s right to interpret the TRIPS Agreement to protect public health. If Novartis is successful, it could jeopardise India’s generic medicines export industry. Currently India’s 67% of inexpensive medicines export goes to developing countries.

“Novartis has told Oxfam that there is no commercial market for Glivec in India and that it is challenging India in order to align Indian intellectual property law with TRIPS”, Charveriat says. “However, India is only trying to use the flexibilities rightfully available to it under TRIPS and Novartis is trying to block that right”. Oxfam is asking for an end to the lawsuit pursued by Novartis against the Indian Government.

Since 2001 things have become worse for sick people in developing countries. Cancer is increasingly affecting people in developing countries, and its rate is due to double by 2020; diabetes has risen from 30 million to 230 million people in the past 20 years with most new cases now reported in poorer countries.

In 2005, more than 4 million people were newly infected by HIV. Still, according to the World Health Organization 74% of AIDS medicines are still under monopoly, 77% of Africans still have no access to AIDS treatment, and 30% of the world’s population still do not have regular access to essential medicines.

“Rich countries must live up to their commitments and stop undermining the Doha Declaration with their selfish actions,” Charveriat said. “Now more than ever we need a global trading system that puts health before profit and makes medicines affordable for all.”

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