{"id":7282,"date":"2005-06-15T11:48:29","date_gmt":"2005-06-15T10:48:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/moomango.co.uk\/htb\/?p=7282"},"modified":"2014-05-21T17:50:55","modified_gmt":"2014-05-21T17:50:55","slug":"msf-criticises-brazilian-government-for-failing-to-break-antiretroviral-patents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/7282","title":{"rendered":"MSF criticises Brazilian government for failing to break antiretroviral patents"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>International medical aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres have criticised the Brazilian government for failing to \u201ckeep its pledge\u201d to break antiretroviral drug patents to produce generic versions of the medicines.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In March, the government threatened to break the patents on four antiretrovirals by April 4 unless the drug manufacturers agreed to allow the country to either produce generic equivalents or to buy them at discounted prices, but it has not done so.<\/p>\n<p>The Brazilian government asked U.S. drug companies Merck, Gilead and Abbott Laboratories to grant the government voluntary licensing to produce generic versions of four drugs produced by the companies and used in Brazil\u2019s National STD\/AIDS Programme. The drugs in question include Merck\u2019s efavirenz, Abbott\u2019s lopinavir and ritonavir and Gilead\u2019s tenofovir.<\/p>\n<p>Brazil\u2019s national AIDS programme, which is considered to be one of the most progressive in the world, already manufactures and distributes generic versions of antiretrovirals, providing them at no cost to HIV-positive people in the country.<\/p>\n<p>The programme ignores all patents issued before 1997, when Brazil signed an intellectual property law in order to join the World Trade Organization. The government over the past three years repeatedly has said it might break patent laws in order to negotiate price reductions with pharmaceutical companies.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe lack of action on the part of Brazilian authorities is incomprehensible. On the international level, Brazil has publicly defended using the flexibilities included in the World Trade Organization\u2019s TRIPS agreement. But when it comes time to transforming this bold posture into acts that benefit the Brazilian population, the government resembles a toothless tiger,\u201d MSF said in a statement, which was signed by 107 other nongovernmental organizations.<\/p>\n<p>A Ministry of Health spokesperson said that breaking a patent is a \u201cdelicate process\u201d and the country does not want the pharmaceutical companies to stop supplying the drugs before Brazil can produce generic equivalents. Supplying the four brand-name antiretrovirals would cost Brazil $169 million \u2014 or 67% of the government\u2019s budget for imported AIDS medications \u2014 according to health ministry figures.<\/p>\n<p>Source: Kaisernetwork.org [May 11, 2005]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>International medical aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres have criticised the Brazilian government for failing to \u201ckeep its pledge\u201d to break antiretroviral drug patents to produce generic versions of the medicines. In March, the government threatened to break the patents on &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-treatment-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7282"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7282\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}