AIDS groups seek WHO monitoring assistance

AIDS activists yesterday urged the government to ask the World Health Organisation (WHO) to monitor the health implications of multilateral trade agreements as Thailand would soon comply with the trade-related agreements on intellectual property rights (TRIPS) next year.

Representatives of the network of consumers, health and Aids activists and people living with HIV/Aids (PWA) said that the effects of the enforcement of the drug patent agreements on medicine prices will become increasingly apparent by that time. Of particular concern, they said, was soaring drug prices as a result of drug monopolisation, which will make several life-saving medicine brands out of reach for the needy poor in many developing countries. The groups yesterday submitted the letter to the prime minister through Public Health Minister Korn Dabaransi and urged the government to initiate measures to ensure that people’s access to medication was safeguarded. Dozens of activists gathered yesterday in front of the Bangkok hotel where the WHO held three-day regional consultations on the implication of the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) multilateral trade agreements on health-related issues. The activists greeted participants with banners that read ’’WTO for the rich’’, ’’Drug patents or lives,’’ and ’’The poor also have rights to medications’’.

Dr Uton Muchtar Rafei, the WHO regional director for Southeast Asia, said people in developing countries spent, on an average, less than US$10 annually on health while the cost of HIV medication was estimated close to $18,000 per year per person. A study of 2,000 HIV/Aids patients at Bamrasnaradul Hospital showed that only 1 per cent of them had been receiving triple drug therapy while another 5 per cent were undergoing the two-drug combination treatment, said Saree Ongsomwang of the Foundation for Consumers. HIV-positive Vant, of the White Dove group, said many PWAs need the medication for HIV and for other opportunistic infection diseases, because these drugs could prolong their lives. The activists raised concerns over the patent medicine obligations. According to them, Thailand has to provide patent protection for the patent owners, which will make local production of certain drugs impossible. Citing Fluconazole, the drug which treats cryptococal meningitis — an infectious brain disease usually suffered by many PWAs — the activists said the price of the drug had fallen from Bt230 per one 200-milligramme capsule to only Bt6.50 after two companies had begun producing analogues locally.

The situation that the PWAs have to face is becoming worse, considering that there is no mechanism under the recent revised Patent Act to control drug prices, preventing monopolisation and giving room to others to produce and distribute drugs if the patent owner fails to do so, she said. The activists demanded that the government introduce special measures to ensure that many life-saving drugs were available and accessible. They said the government had to take responsibility for the signing of the TRIPS agreements and revising the patent law in a way, that could benefit consumers. Dr Brian Doberstyn, the WHO representative to Thailand, insisted that the WHO would work with governments, at their request, and with international organisations, to monitor and analyse the pharmaceutical and public health implication of international agreements, including trade agreements. Public Health Minister Korn said the implication of the multilateral trade agreements on health was an urgent and important issue which called for an understanding by the WHO member countries. However, Muchtar Rafei said that the experience in the region had shown that the health sector is not fully aware of the importance of the issue.

By Mukdawan Sakboon