SARAH BOSELEY, Johannesburg | Friday
A CRITICAL battle is about to begin in the Pretoria High Court, where 42 pharmaceutical companies, including the British giant GlaxoSmithKline, are attempting to block the government from importing the cheap medicines its people so badly need to survive treatable diseases like diarrhoea, meningitis, Aids and TB.
The drug companies have spent three years and millions of rands preparing the case. They have retained almost every patent lawyer in South Africa. On March 5 their lawyers will try to stop the government from buying medicines from countries where the prices are lowest, on the grounds that it infringes world trade agreements.
The rest of Africa will be closely watching the outcome of the trial. So will developing countries on other continents. With the death toll from infectious diseases inexorably rising, especially in Africa, a tide of outrage is swelling among local activists and international aid organisations which see medicines denied to the sick in the name of commerce.
There are more than 32 million men, women and children infected by HIV in developing countries. AZT and 3TC, the basic anti-retroviral drugs in the West, would keep them alive and well, but the price tag is R79_000 to R120_000 a patient a year. The majority of employed people in South Africa, with whole families to support, earn less than R20_000 a year, and by comparison with most of the rest of the continent they are rich.
But there are now alternatives – cheap copies of life-saving medicines called generics, made mainly in Brazil, India and Thailand. Thailand believes it could reduce the cost to R1 400 a patient a year. It is a price the government might be able to pay for the life of its people, but the drug companies, afraid of the potential worldwide consequences if their prices start to be undercut, say no.
The Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association of South Africa, which is bringing the case with the international companies, says it supports any countrys right to buy supplies of drugs that are cheaper abroad in exceptional circumstances. But it argues that Section 15c of the Medicines Act, passed in 1997 to allow it to import cheap copies of Western medicines, would give the health minister unfettered discretion to override patent rights for medicines in this country.
ZA*NOW
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