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Date: Fri, 1 Dec 2000 22:47:36 EST
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Subject: [AfricaMatters] Glaxo Tries to Block Generics in Ghana; Rpt Card
on Rx Cos.
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Sent: Friday, December 01, 2000 11:58 AM
Subject: Glaxo Attempts to Block Access To Generic AIDS Drugs in Ghana
>-----Original Message-----
>Sent: Friday, December 01, 2000 10:50 AM
>Subject: FW: Glaxo Tries to Block Generics in Ghana; Rpt Card on Rx Cos.
>
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>-----Original Message-----
>>Sent: Friday, December 01, 2000 10:39 AM
>Subject: Glaxo Tries to Block Generics in Ghana; Rpt Card on Rx Cos. >
>The Wall Street Journal
>December 1, 2000
>Glaxo Attempts to Block Access
>To Generic AIDS Drugs in Ghana
>By MARK SCHOOFS
>Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
>
>In the midst of the wrenching international debate over how to get expensive
>HIV drugs into Africa, pharmaceutical giant Glaxo Wellcome PLC has set off a
>new controversy by trying to block access to less-costly generic versions of
>its top-selling AIDS medicine.
>In letters to a drug distributor in Ghana and an Indian generic-drug maker,
>Glaxo said sales of generic versions of its drug, Combivir, in Ghana would
>be illegal because they would be violating company patents. As a result, the
>Indian company, Cipla Ltd. of Bombay, has stopped selling its low-cost
>version in Ghana, a small country in west Africa. However, officials at the
>multilateral African agency that issued the Glaxo patents in question said
>they are either invalid in Ghana or don't apply.
>Glaxo's actions are "wrong," said Christopher Kiige, head patent examiner of
>the African Regional Industrial Property Organization. He says: "If [Glaxo
>officials] went to court they would lose." A Glaxo spokesman in London says
>the drug maker believes its drug is patent-protected in Ghana but declined
>to provide an explanation or legal documentation.
>This clash may seem like a tiny dust-up in a far-off minor market. But the
>conflict is the latest skirmish in one of the most contentious issues
>emerging in sub-Saharan Africa, where 25 million people are infected with
>HIV, but only a tiny proportion have access to life-prolonging HIV drug
>cocktails.
>During the past year, and under intense pressure, five major drug makers,
>including Glaxo, have agreed substantially slash prices of their AIDS drugs
>in Africa. But to date, concrete pricing agreements have been struck with
>only one country, Senegal. A second agreement is expected to be announced
>with Uganda Friday, according to people familiar with talks between Uganda
>and the drug makers.
>Glaxo has offered to sell Combivir in Senegal and Uganda for $2 a day, far
>less than the drug sells for in the U.S. The company said it has offered the
>same discount to Ghana. Cipla sold its generic version in Ghana for about
>$1.74 a day.
>The five drug companies, which also include Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.,
>Merck & Co., Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH of Germany and Roche
>Holding Ltd. of Switzerland, offered to discount their prices in part
>because
>they fear African nations will begin buying generic copies of their drugs
>produced by Cipla in India and by other companies in Thailand and Brazil. In
>recent months, several African nations have begun exploring the option of
>doing just that. But a debate is now raging as to whether such actions would
>violate the companies' patents and international intellectual- property
>agreements.
>The pharmaceutical companies argue that without intellectual-property
>protection they would have no incentive to invest the millions required to
>discover and develop new drugs. Ghana may represent only a sliver of Glaxo's
>revenue, "but where do you draw the line?" asks Martin Sutton, a Glaxo
>spokesman. In particular, Glaxo is believed to be worried that if a small
>country such as Ghana violates patent protection, that could open a
>Pandora's box of violations in larger markets, such as South Africa, Latin
>America and parts of southeast Asia where AIDS is also raging.
>"It's the precedent aspect," says Peter Young, chief executive officer of
>the biotech company AlphaVax Inc. of Durham, N.C., and a former Glaxo
>executive. "The companies are sensitive about a pattern starting to develop
>where countries use generics."
>Indeed, the product in question is becoming increasingly valuable to Glaxo.
>Combivir is a combination of two principal AIDS drugs, AZT and 3TC. Total
>world-wide sales of AZT, 3TC, and Combivir are expected to top $1.1 billion
>this year, up from about $775 million in 1997, according to IMS Health, a
>drug marketing-research firm in Westport, Conn.
>But as the AIDS pandemic is killing many millions of people in the prime of
>their lives and producing millions of orphans, public-health officials and
>grass-roots activists are increasingly advocating that African nations begin
>buying generic drugs, even if it means that intellectual-property rights are
>violated.
>In South Africa, the Treatment Action Campaign, an AIDS advocacy group,
>recently imported a generic version of Pfizer Inc.'s expensive antifungal
>drug, Diflucan, which treats two opportunistic illnesses common in AIDS
>patients. And this week, the South African government granted a legal
>exemption to the group, allowing it to continue importing the drug.
>The battle in Ghana is being watched closely elsewhere partly because it
>involves Cipla, one of the world's major producers of generic AIDS
>medicines. Cipla's stature, and its ability to market its drugs throughout
>Africa, may be why Glaxo has moved so aggressively in Ghana, according to
>industry analysts. Glaxo says it is simply protecting patents in a routine
>fashion.
>Several months ago, Healthcare Ltd., a pharmaceutical distributor in Accra,
>Ghana, purchased a small consignment of Duovir, Cipla's version of Glaxo's
>Combivir. Soon afterward, Glaxo sent letters to Cipla and Healthcare
>charging that "importation of Duovir into Ghana by Cipla or its affiliates
>represents an infringement of our company's exclusive patent rights." As a
>result, Cipla stopped selling Duovir in Ghana, according to Amar Lulla, CEO
>of Cipla. Healthcare, the Ghana distributor, said boxes of Duovir remain
>unopened in its offices and that no patients have received any of the drug.
>In its letters, Glaxo said four patents issued by the African Regional
>Industrial Property Organization in Harare, Zimbabwe, provide the company
>exclusive marketing rights to its drug in Ghana. But three of those patents
>"are not valid in Ghana," says ARIPO's Mr. Kiige. The fourth patent covers a
>specific formulation of the drug, but Cipla said that patent doesn't pertain
>to its product.
>Mr. Kiige said the three patents are invalid because at the time they were
>issued Ghana didn't grant patent protection to pharmaceuticals. Indeed,
>Ghana had filed legal documents, obtained by The Wall Street Journal, that
>clearly state the country had rejected the three patents. Ghana's registrar
>of patents declined to comment. While the dispute is continuing, neither
>Cipla nor any other generic drug maker is expected to provide generic AIDS
>drugs to Ghana.
>"Glaxo has called out the dogs," says Toby Kasper, an activist in Capetown,
>South Africa, with Doctors Without Borders, which has been fighting for
>lower-priced drugs throughout the continent. Mr. Kasper says Glaxo's action
>"goes a long way to explaining why there is so much skepticism in the
>developing world towards the negotiations" between the five drug makers and
>African nations.
>Write to Mark Schoofs at [log in to unmask]
>
>Copyright © 2000 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
>
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