PRIVATE PATENTS AND PUBLIC HEALTH

PRIVATE PATENTS AND PUBLIC HEALTH
In parallel to this process, the first generic ARVs began to be
manufactured in India. Demand spurred by their designation as
‘essential’ coupled with their prequalification by the WHO 217 and a
concerted international effort to mobilise funding to treat HIV created
a market for robust generic competition.
The HIV crisis demonstrated both 1) the need for medically important
drugs to be included on the list and 2) the power of EML inclusion as an
impetus for bringing prices down.
Table 10, above, shows that a number of the new essential medicines on
the list are subject to patents, and that the expiry date of those patents are
far in the future. Without deliberate action by governments and
companies — as was taken to provide access to HIV treatment — these
medicines will not become affordable.
The EML is a tool for the practical implementation of the internationally
agreed principle that IP should not stand in the way of measures to
promote the human right to public health. Affordability is no longer a
prerequisite for inclusion of a medicine in the EML; instead, inclusion
must become a reason to ensure that treatments become affordable and
thereby a ground — if not an obligation — for governments to act when
pricing of essential medicines prohibits their use by people in need.
THE CHALLENGES OF HEPATITIS C, CANCER, AND BIOSIMILARS
The medicines added to the EML in May 2015 present a key opportunity
to exercise the EML as a tool for access. The game-changing treatments
for hepatitis C, several cancers, and tuberculosis now on the EML are as
badly needed as they are currently priced out of reach.
HEPATITIS C
Chronic hepatitis C, for example, affects 130–150 million people
globally, and liver diseases associated with it kill 300–500,000 people a
year. Additionally, 5.5 million people are co-infected with hepatitis C and
HIV and consequentially suffer increased rates of both HIV-related and
liver-related illnesses.
The new essential medicines to treat hepatitis C are effective enough to
provide a cure for all. Until recently, treatment for hepatitis C was:
difficult to administer (requiring regular hospital visits and extensive
monitoring); difficult to undergo (requiring daily or weekly injections
and several pills a day, and frequently causing debilitating side-effects);
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