NEW DELHI - Health activists Wednesday criticised the passing by India's lower house of parliament of a patents law prohibiting the manufacture of low-cost generics, saying it threatens millions of people around the world living with HIV-AIDS and cancer.
"Because India is one of the world's biggest producers of generic drugs, this law will have a severe knock-on effect on many developing countries which depend on imported generic drugs from India," said Samar Verma, regional policy advisor of British charity Oxfam.
"Oxfam fears that the prices of drugs will be out of reach for millions living with HIV-AIDS in Africa and elsewhere," the agency said in a statement.
The controversial Patent (Amendment) Bill was passed by the 545-member lower house of parliament late Tuesday.
It is aimed at ensuring India comes in line with World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules and will replace the country's current patent law, which allows drug makers to copy patented products using a different manufacturing process.
The bill still requires upper house approval before becoming law.
It was passed by the lower house after Trade Minister Kamal Nath assured lawmakers that his ministry would install safeguards to prevent a hike in prices of crucial pharmaceutical products in India.
"All safeguards have been put in the regime and the government will have enormous powers to deal with any unusual price rise," he said.
"The bill is not multinationally driven, but nationally driven."
Oxfam, however, said the "thrust of the bill remains overly restrictive with regard to acess to medicines".
Some of the provisions of the patent law passed by the Indian parliament went beyond that required under the TRIPS provisions, it said.
TRIPS is an agreement on intellectual property rights under the World Trade Organisation. These rights are agreed upon by member countries of the WTO.
"The law makes it impossible to overide any newly-granted patents for three years. Under TRIPS obligations, this delay would not have been necessary," Oxfam said.
Other health advocacy groups also slammed provisions of the bill.
"People who rely on low-cost medicines will have to wait three years before a generic company can even make an application for a right to produce the drug," said a statement by a group of activists including France-based Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) and the Affordable Medicines and Treatment Campaign (India).
"Whereas people in wealthy countries will have access to new medicines immediately when they are proved safe and effective, people in poor countries will have to wait years."
MSF claims 50 percent of people living with HIV-AIDS in the developing world depend on generic drugs from India, which is the world's fourth-largest producer of medicines by volume but only 13th by value -- an indication of the relative cheapness of its products.
Last week, several groups representing people living with HIV-AIDS in Kenya and Uganda appealed to the Indian government to drop the law or introduce major amendments.
D.G. Shah, secretary general of the independent Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance, agreed the bill goes beyond what was required of India by the World Trade Organisation.
"If the government's intention was not to default on its commitments to the WTO, all it had to do was amend section 5 of the Patents Act 1970 to enable product patents for pharmaceuticals and food from January 1, 2005," he said.
"Instead it chose to rewrite the whole Act through an ordinance."
The new patents bill also covers products such as mobile telephones, computers and chemicals.
03/23/2005 06:24 GMT