OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Thursday 10.30am.
THE government was mulling the use of a controversial method to force down the price of drugs, such as Aids treatments, by letting non-patent holders produce medicines cheaper locally, a senior official indicated.
The director general of health, Ayanda Ntsaluba said officials had held “exploratory” talks with their trade and industry counterparts on compulsory licensing of essential drugs.
Compulsory licensing, which is allowed under World Trade Organisation rules, would allow the government to issue licenses to non-patent holders to produce cheaper versions of drugs.
Ntsaluba was speaking at parliamentary hearings on Aids where victims of the disease called on the government to force drug companies to lower their prices.
He warned however that compulsory licensing, which is strongly opposed by the pharmaceutical industry, had “huge international ramifications” and cabinet would have to weigh up the pros and cons.
Zackie Achmat, a spokesman for the Treatment Action Campaign which is lobbying for cheaper Aids treatment, told the hearing drug companies had made a fortune “out of our misery”.
His call was supported by Medicines Sans Frontieres’ representative Toby Kasper, who said the government should use the legal mechanisms at its disposal to give people the drugs they needed.
He said in 1999, the drug company Glaxo-Wellcome made a profit of $589-million on Combivor, a combination of its anti-retroviral AZT and the drug 3TC.
Aids drugs and legislation aimed at bringing medicine prices down are both hugely controversial issues in South Africa.
The government is under fire from Aids activists and health workers over its refusal to make AZT freely available in state hospitals.
South Africa has also in recent years been blacklisted by the United States over concerns that its liberal medicine laws could lead to an infringement of intellectual property rights.
The country last year headed off US trade sanctions when it promised to bring legislation in line with WTO rules. — AFP