PHA-Exchange> WHO Chief's Stand on Generic Drugs Slammed

[Wim De Ceukelaire]

HEALTH:
WHO Chief's Stand on Generic Drugs Slammed
Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Feb 2 (IPS) - Civil society and humanitarian groups slammed the
new head of the World Health Organisation (WHO), on the sidelines of a
meeting here, after she appeared to favour the interests of
pharmaceutical giants over the plight of the sick and the poor in the
developing world.

''It is not the role of the WHO to protect the interests of the
pharmaceutical companies,'' Dr. Ellen Hoen of the international
humanitarian agency Doctors Without Borders (or MSF for Medecins Sans
Frontieres) said at a press conference, Friday. ''It is a reason for
concern that the WHO takes a more conservative role than the WTO (World
Trade Organisation).'' 

‘'The new DG (director general) of the WHO should have stood up for the
poor,'' added James Love, head of Knowledge Ecology International, a
Washington D.C.-based group lobbying for cheaper generic drugs. ‘'This
is a bad start. She needs to educate herself about intellectual property
rights.'' 

A Thai AIDS rights activist was as critical. ‘'The WHO has to look more
closely at its role in the global public health campaign. It must be
able to stand up to the threats of big pharmaceutical companies,'' said
Nimit Tienudom, director of AIDS Access Foundation, a Bangkok-based
non-governmental organisation (NGO) campaign for cheaper anti-AIDS
drugs. 

The rebukes were in response to comments made Thursday by Dr. Margaret
Chan who was appointed to head the global health agency in November last
year. On two occasions, say her critics, she failed to express her
support for developing countries fighting for cheaper alternatives to
expensive branded drugs. What she eventually said should embolden the
pharmaceutical industry, they add. 

The most troubling for champions of cheaper alternative drugs were the
comments made by Chan when she visited Thailand's National Health
Security Office (NHSO), where she cautioned against hasty embrace of
countries resorting to ‘compulsory licencing' to secure cheaper generic
drugs. 

‘'I'd like to underline that we have to find a right balance for
compulsory licencing. We can't be naïve about this. There is no perfect
solution for accessing drugs in both quality and quantity,'' Chan is
quoted as having said at the NHSO, according to Friday's ‘Bangkok Post'
newspaper. 

Earlier in the day, Chan praised the pharmaceutical industry lavishly
during a keynote address delivered at the opening of a two-day
international conference that focused on ways to improve access to
essential health technologies for neglected diseases. The event, hosted
by a local university, attracted over 300 participants from the
developing and developed world. 

The stance taken by Chan comes at a pivotal moment in Thailand's quest
to provide cheaper generic drugs to the country's poor. On Monday, the
military-appointed government gave the nod to issue compulsory licences
to secure two drugs, one for HIV/AIDS, and the other for heart disease.
That move triggered a round of protest from the pharmaceutical industry
and from sections of the international media more sympathetic to
corporate financial agendas. 

This was the third drug in as many months that Bangkok had felt a need
to break the patent held by a pharmaceutical company by issuing a
compulsory licence, which is a provision recognised at a WTO ministerial
meeting in 2001. Under this option that is part of the trade related
intellectual property rights (TRIPS), countries can issue a compulsory
licence to secure cheaper generic drugs to meet a public health
emergency. 

Thai AIDS and public health activists had been hoping that Chan's
presence in Bangkok would boost the government's move to supply cheaper
drugs for the country's 80,000 people with HIV who need anti-AIDS
medication out of over 600,000 who have the killer disease. 

Chan's comments have broader implications, too, since they come at a
time when the Geneva-based health agency is under increasing scrutiny by
NGOs and public health advocates. The latter fear that the WHO is
selling out to the pharmaceutical industry given the pressure imposed on
it by the U.S. government. 

Few events illustrate this climate better than the way William Aldis,
the WHO representative in Thailand, was forced to quit his Bangkok
mission after writing a commentary in the ‘Bangkok Post' newspaper in
January 2006, where he supported Thailand's move to secure alternatives
to expensive brand-name drugs. 

It was an event not lost on U.S. Congressman Jim McDermott. In a speech
to the House of Representatives in June 2006, McDermott drew attention
to the U.S. government's role in Aldis' removal, saying, ‘'They put him
elsewhere à in a position where he would have no power similar to what
he had before.'' 

Washington also took the WHO to task last year for co-sponsoring a
publication that was critical of U.S. trade polices. The study looked at
the options available for developing countries to use the flexibility
available under the TRIPS agreement to gain access to cheaper
medicines. 

‘'(This publication) spuriously characterises the trade policy of the
United States as a threat to public health, and makes unnecessarily
inflammatory and prejudicial recommendations as to how the United States
can improve its trade policies,'' wrote William Steiger, a senior
official at the U.S. department of health and human services, in an
August 2006 letter to the acting director general of the WHO. 

What troubles civil society campaigners like Martin Khor, director of
Third World Network, a Penang-based think tank, is the reluctance of the
WHO to defend its position. ‘'It is not normal for the WHO to be silent
on this issue of developing countries using TRIPS flexibility to get
cheaper drugs,'' he told IPS. 

The current tendency of the WHO to cave into such pressure goes against
the past record of the organisation as a leading advocate for developing
countries to tap the special provisions in TRIPS, he added. ‘'The WHO
should be encouraging countries to fully exploit TRIPS flexibility for
the benefit of public health.'' (END/2007)
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