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Brazil
Takes Step Toward Breaking AIDS Patents
BRASILIA, Brazil (Reuters) - Brazil has moved a step closer
to breaking AIDS drug patents by asking U.S. companies for the right
to copy four products so the country can slash health costs, the
government said on Tuesday.
Brazil requested Bristol-Myers Squibb's, Abbot Laboratories
Inc. and Gilead Sciences Inc. to grant "voluntary licensing"
of drug technology so it can keep its much-copied AIDS program afloat,
the health ministry said.
Brazil imports the four drugs used in its free, combination
antiretroviral drug treatment. It wants to make copies and pay royalties.
The products in question are Merck's efavirenz,
Abbott's lopinavir and ritonavir,
and Gilead's tenofovir.
"We expect to cut by half what we currently pay,"
the ministry's health control secretary, Jarbas Barbosa, said in
a statement on the request sent on Monday.
Brazil has often threatened to break drug patents unless foreign
manufacturers slash costs.
Latin America's largest country now says it can no longer afford
to import AIDS drugs and must become self-sufficient.
Under Brazilian law, and based on World Trade Organization
rules, a nation can break drug patents by applying a "compulsory
license" on a product if it is a case of national emergency
or national interest.
That would mean Brazil would begin domestic manufacture of
products without permission. It would still pay royalties.
"[U.S. companies] know we are talking seriously of applying
a compulsory license," Barbosa said.
Company officials in Brazil and the United States were not
immediately available for comment.
In the 1990s experts expected more than 1 million Brazilians
to develop AIDS by 2000. Brazil began free access to its antiretroviral
combination therapy in 1997 and has kept the number of people living
with HIV at around 600,000.
The government expects to increase the number of Brazilians
on AIDS drugs to 180,000 in 2005 from 150,000 in 2004.
The cost of providing foreign imports of antiretroviral drugs
in the combination has skyrocketed from 50% of the program's budget
in 1998 to an estimated 85% in 2005.
Brazil makes 8 of the 16 drugs in the combination therapy and
hopes to begin manufacture of more in the first half of 2005.
The country lacks pharmaceutical industry technology and capacity
to manufacture all 16 drugs.
03/18/05
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