BOMBAY - Global health activists Monday stepped up pressure against a controversial Indian patents bill that would bar firms from producing cheap copies of brand name drugs, saying it threatened millions of people living with HIV-AIDS and cancer around the world.
Groups representing those living with the diseases in Asia, Africa and Latin America demanded that the Indian parliament drastically change the bill.
"We are not against patents but we are against the Indian bill in its present form which goes beyond what is required under TRIPS," said Anand Grover, lawyer and convener of Affordable Medicines and Treatment Campaign, a non-governmental organisation.
TRIPS is an agreement on intellectual property rights under the World Trade Organisation. These rights are agreed upon by member countries of the WTO.
Grover said under TRIPS, developing countries such as India did not have to provide patent protection for new uses of known drugs, new dosages and formulations or combinations of known drugs.
"TRIPS and many previous Indian committees have said that patents apply to new molecules only. But our bill goes beyond this by increasing the scope of patentability even to new dosages, combinations and formulations of known drugs," Grover said.
He said the bill in its present form would bar Indian firms from producing the "three-in-one" fixed dose combination of anti-retroviral drugs widely used to treat those living with HIV-AIDS in the developing world.
"Such wide patentability is clearly done to favour the multinational companies," said Ellen T'hoen of the France-based Medecins Sans Frontieres, one of the activists who attended a discussion on patents in Bombay, India's western economic hub where many big pharmaceutical companies are based.
Until now, Indian firms have been able to make cheaper versions of patented drugs as India's patent laws protect the process of manufacture rather than the medicines themselves.
By putting together the drug in a different way, pharmaceutical firms have been able to produce generics of all well-known products.
Dozens of anti-cancer activists claimed drug prices would rise substantially in the long term once product patents come into existence.
"The bill is a sure shot way to an early death to cancer patients making drugs out of their reach. Only elite patients would be able to afford these drugs," said Y.K. Sapru of Indian Cancer Patients Association.
Groups from Africa pleaded that the proposed law could adversely affect treatment of millions of people living with HIV-AIDS.
"Today because of Indian companies I can treat four of my family members suffering from AIDS. But the new law could make that difficult," said Tendayi Kureya, representative of the Pan African Treatment Access Movement, an umbrella group of more than 300 NGOs helping to make cheaper drugs available in Africa.
He said treatment using drugs of Indian companies such as Ranbaxy and Cipla cost 30 dollars per patient a month, "while patented products can cost two to three times more."
"I watched my brother die a few years back because of no medicine... now I do not want to see someone else die because drugs are costly," Kureya told AFP.
Fifty percent of HIV-AIDS patients in developing countries taking anti-retrovirals rely on India's form of "three-in-one" drugs.
African countries have been urging the Indian government to drop the patents bill, introduced into parliament last Friday.
Indian officials defend the new law as necessary to comply with WTO rules but claim HIV-AIDS patients will not suffer as Indian firms will be able to continue to supply drugs to countries that do not have manufacturing facilities of their own.
Africa is home to almost two-thirds of those living with HIV-AIDS around the world, according to the United Nations, which reported that in 2004, 3.1 million Africans became infected while 2.3 million died of AIDS.
03/21/2005 13:01 GMT