We will defy patents to save lives - minister

Kenyan authorities are determined to resist restrictive international patents on life-prolonging antiretroviral (ARV) medication that has the potential to reduce the deadly impact of HIV/AIDS.

"We shall not stand by and see people die. We shall source cheaper essential generic drugs from anywhere and from whomever is ready to do business with us to protect the lives of those who need them," assistant health minister Wilfred Machage told IRIN/PlusNews during a recent United Nations Millennium Development Goals review forum for African countries, organised by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.

Machage said inflexible patent legislation had given international drug manufacturers too much leeway in pricing their products, hence the need for a new law to protect local firms and consumers against potential litigation.

Swiss drug manufacturer Novartis has brought legal action against the government of India in an effort to enforce stricter patent protection of its drugs, some of which are being manufactured as generics in India.

The standard first-line ARV regimen in Kenya is a combination of three Indian-manufactured ARV generics: stavudine, lamivudine and nevirapine. The Novartis case has led to fears that, should the company win, more than 200,000 Kenyans in need of the drugs would be forced to buy them at exorbitant prices.

More than half of all ARVs in Africa are supplied by Indian companies; AIDS activists argue that if Novartis wins the case, this could set a dangerous precedent and lead to certain death for thousands of HIV-positive individuals across the continent.

In 2006, Kenya's government overturned sections of a parliamentary bill that would have made it more difficult to import generic ARVs.

Speaking to IRIN/PlusNews at the Nairobi forum, WHO Deputy Director-General Anders Nordstrom said his organisation strongly backed the principle of universal access to healthcare.

"WHO supports any move that would enable the poor to access healthcare cheaply. This is provided for under [the WHO's] Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights through 'compulsory licensing,' which gives governments hit by epidemics [the right] to break patents and manufacture drugs."

Many African governments, including Kenya's, support compulsory licensing for ARVs on the grounds that HIV/AIDS falls into the epidemic category.

Nordstrom added that access to cheaper generics was a major challenge in achieving the sixth Millennium Development Goal of reversing the spread of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria by 2015.

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