THE VERSION of the Bicameral Conference Committee of the cheap medicines bills has been ratified by Congress.

And from the way Press Secretary Ignacio Bunye welcomed it, the President might just sign this “Universally Accessible Cheaper and Quality Medicine Act of 2008” into law. We hope, though, that meantime the President holds her reins and ask that it be studied further.

Despite its claims, we still doubt that the Act will promote access to medicines for all by way of cheaper prices and universal availability of medicines under its provisions.

The Act gives the control and regulation of prices to the President and not to an independent drugs regulatory board, which it scrapped from the original cheap medicines bill.

Giving the power to control and regulate prices of drugs to the President makes the job a political decision, which is not reliable.

A political decision can be so loaded with many considerations and even pressures from various sectors, including the powerful multinational drug corporations and their powerful governments, that it may only reflect the weakness of the President, especially one besieged by problems to his or her hold to power.

The Act also claims it can give the populace cheaper prices on drugs, especially on chronic diseases - probably including tuberculosis, heart disease, diabetes, AIDS, even for cancer treatment - through parallel importation, or the importation of drugs from another country where they are sold at a lower price, like India.

The Act also prohibits the granting of new patents based only on newly-discovered uses of a known drug substance, to allow the country to produce their generic versions upon patent expiry. It likewise allows the government to manufacture or cause the manufacture of patented drugs “when the public interest is at stake”, of course with compensation paid to the patent holder.

All these “privileges”, we understand, are embodied in the Doha Declaration signed in 2001 in Qatar.

The “Declaration on TRIPS and Public Health” affirmed that “…the TRIPS Agreement can and should be interpreted in a manner supportive of WTO members’ right to protect public health and, in particular, to promote access to medicines for all.”

Interpretation of this, however, remains in conflict, with the TRIPS also acknowledging the right to patents. In 2005, for instance, cancer patient groups in India used Indian intellectual property law to stop a patent application by the Swiss company Novartis for its anti-cancer drug, Glivec. The Indian IP law allowed Indian companies to continue making generic versions at $2,700 per patient a year, as opposed to Novartis having a monopoly priced version for sale at $27,000 per patient a year.

However, Novartis has challenged in court this right of India to interpret the TRIPS Agreement to protect public health. And it might just be successful.

Such conflicts put to doubt our ability to continually import cheap medicines under parallel importation, especially with the prospect that generics may be allowed to be used only domestically by the country producing them under the limitations imposed by TRIPS. In fact, if my reading does not fail me, the privilege to export them was only up to 2006.

The best way, therefore, to assure ourselves of cheap medicines via the generics is to manufacture them here in the country as allowed under the Doha Declaration. However, we seem to be in trouble here presently, with our inability to acquire most of the raw materials in the country. Our pharmaceuticals are known to be importing some 80% of their needed raw materials.

Our other problem is branded medicine which is monopolized by multinationals. As we mentioned in an earlier column, they sell to the doctors who will prescribe them at their very expensive costs, which has prejudiced the prescription for the much cheaper generic drugs.

In sum, it is our position that we may assure cheap medicine in this country only if there is an independent regulatory board setting a price ceiling for medicines, meantime impose the “generics only” provisions, and where government fully supports initiatives to draw much of our raw materials from the country and produce the medicines here.

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