Missing the Target #5: Improving AIDS Drug Access ... - CD8 T cells

ARGENTINAParallel importingRelating to the depletion of intellectual property rights, Argentina adopts theprinciple of international exhaustion. This means that parallel importing is legaland acceptable. (Parallel import is the import and resale in a country, without theconsent of the patent holder, of a patented product that has been legitimatelyput on the market of the exporting country under a so-called parallel patent.Since some patented products are sold at different prices in different markets, therationale for parallel importation is to enable the import of patented products fromcountries in which they are sold at lower prices into those countries where the samepatented product is being sold at a higher price.)Patent-holders’ oppositionNational companies represent approximately 50 percent of the local drug market;most of them manufacture ARVs. These companies have historically built theircompetitiveness by introducing imitation drugs, simultaneously with the originaldrugs, that are manufactured by the innovative labs or their licensees.According to the information disclosed by press accounts, as of late 2005 thenumber of patents granted for pharmaceutical products and procedures wasminimal. The National Institute of Industrial Property had granted 8 patents forproducts and 180 for procedures; combined, this covered 5 percent of the drugsmarketed in the country.Many multinational pharmaceutical companies are unhappy with this situation,claiming that their rights as internationally recognized patent-holders have beenviolated. Some have resorted to legal remedies to enforce their rights. For example,at the beginning of 2007, Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS) filed a lawsuit demandinga ban on the production and marketing of didanosine by a domestic Argentiniancompany. The presiding judge ruled in the company’s favor, essentially forcingthe government to purchase the higher-priced version of the drug from BMSdirectly. The government in April 2007 warned that it would have difficulty coveringsuch high costs. According to PLWHA organizations, doctors, and health centeradministrators, one result has been stock-outs of didanosine at major healthcareand treatment centers. This has placed great risks on the health of at least 1,800beneficiaries of the National AIDS Program.Improvements in governmental commitmentIn 2005, the Argentinian and Brazilian health ministries signed an agreement toestablish a joint work program to strengthen the exchange information relatedto intellectual property in order to ensure better access to medicines and to worktogether to properly incorporate the flexibilities and safeguards of the TRIPSagreement. This commitment was complemented seven months later with the“South American Ministers Declaration on Intellectual Property, Access to Medicinesand Health” signed by nine Latin American countries.61