Court case over cut-price drugs continues in South Africa

swissinfo.ch

A legal battle involving two major Swiss drugs companies has resumed in South Africa. Roche and Novartis are among 40 pharmaceutical companies taking the government to court over a law allowing South Africa to import cut-price drugs.

The case has led the United Nations programme on HIV/Aids (UNAIDS) to call on pharmaceutical companies to consider new ways of doing business.

The hearing, which is taking place in the capital, Pretoria, was postponed last month. It centres on a South African law adopted in 1997 – but never implemented – which gives the health minister a limited right to import generic versions of patented drugs or to license their domestic production.

The drug companies argue that the law infringes patent rights and discriminates against the industry, endangering profits and research.

But the South African government maintains that it cannot afford to pay for patented drugs to fight the Aids epidemic, which has affected about 10 per cent of the country’s population of 45 million.

New approach needed

UNAIDS believes the gravity of the situation calls for an entirely new approach.

“The kind of dynamic that exists in the industrialised world – where drug companies recoup their investment in research and development and provide return to shareholders – should not apply in the same way in the developing world,” said Ben Plumley, policy adviser to UNAIDS.

The pharmaceutical companies say tackling the Aids epidemic is not just a question of providing free or cut-price drugs. They say trained healthcare workers and effective laboratory systems are needed and the medicines themselves can be very complicated to take.

“All these are understandable complications,” said Plumley. “But they don’t detract from the fact that we still have an important moral challenge in getting those medications to the world’s poor.

“We believe that the HIV epidemic is perhaps the greatest social, medical and economic crisis of our generation. It is the defining public health crisis and one of the components of that which need to be addressed as a matter of urgency is the question of access to treatment and care for the majority of the world’s population living with HIV/AIDS who are in developing countries.”

UNAIDS says there is a need not only to get reduced pricing from the patent holders but also to involve generic manufacturers. The organisation says that wherever competition has been allowed, the prices of medicines have dropped.

On Tuesday, a group of 28 development and aid organisations called on Roche and Novartis to withdraw from their legal challenge to the South African government.

The non-governmental organisations – including Swissaid and Terre des Hommes -said it was “shocking that Novartis and Roche should give higher priority to preserving their profit margins and patents than the health of millions of people”.

They also called on the Swiss government to support an international agreement restricting the application of patent law when it could lead to the infringement of basic human rights.

by Vincent Landon