India outlaws copying of low-cost generic drugs: WHO criticizes parliament’s move
NEW DELHI, March 23: India’s upper house of parliament passed a controversial patents law on Wednesday despite criticism from health activists and opposition members that the legislation would prohibit the manufacture of low-cost generic drugs. Drug firms disputed the claims that millions of HIV-AIDS and cancer sufferers are threatened by the bill.
The Patent (Amendment) Bill was passed by the 250-member upper house of parliament Wednesday evening while the 545-member lower house approved it Tuesday although the opposition staged a walkout in both the houses. Parliamentary approval paves the way for the patents bill, which prohibits domestic firms from copying low-cost generic versions of patented drugs, to become law.
“Because India is one of the world’s biggest producers of generic drugs, this law will have a severe knock-on effect on many developing countries which depend on imported generic drugs from India,” said Samar Verma, regional policy advisor of British-based development agency Oxfam.
“Oxfam fears that the prices of drugs will be out of reach for millions living with HIV-AIDS in Africa and elsewhere,” Verma said in a statement.
It aims to ensure India falls in line with World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules and will replace legislation which allows drug makers to copy patented products using a different manufacturing process.
Health activists said the law will have international ramifications, especially for those living with HIV-AIDS and cancer in developing countries.
“People who rely on low-cost medicines will have to wait three years before a generic company can even make an application for a right to produce the drug,” said a statement by a group of activists including France-based Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) and the Affordable Medicines and Treatment Campaign (India).
“Whereas people in wealthy countries will have access to new medicines immediately when they are proved safe and effective, people in poor countries will have to wait years.”
The MSF claims 50 per cent of people living with HIV-AIDS in the developing world depend on generic drugs from India, which is the world’s fourth-largest producer of medicines by volume but only 13th by value — an indication of the relative cheapness of its products.
However, Mumbai-based company Cipla said the new law would not hamper exports of its popular three-in-one anti-AIDS drug cocktail to Africa.
WHO CONCERN: The World Health Organization (WHO) has voiced concern over the new Indian law as the UN body fears it could hit the provision of cheaper generic drugs to poor countries.
“It has worried us for a while. We have followed the debate very closely,” the WHO’s deputy director for the department of essential medicines said.
He said the WHO had recently written to Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the subject.
“We recalled the importance of the manufacture in India of generic medicines affects many developing countries,” he added.
And he said they had insisted that “the country uses to the maximum the flexibility offered” by an Aug 2003 agreement by members of the World Trade Organization dealing with the export of generic medicines to poor countries hit by health epidemics such as AIDS. —AFP
