Brazil's health minister has moved to strip Roche pharmaceutical's patent on the anti-AIDS drug Nelfinavir after negotiations failed to lower the price.
Mr Jose Serra said he would use a clause in Brazil's 1997 intellectual property law that allows patents to be broken in cases of national emergency or when companies employ abusive pricing policies.
The decision came after six month of negotiation "and after exhausting all the possibilities for an agreement," the ministry said in a statement. Roche will continue to supply the drug until December 2001, when the contract with the Health Ministry ends.
The move marks the first time Brazil has stripped the patent on an anti-AIDS medication, despite previous threats to do so.
Brazil, which has the highest number of AIDS victims in Latin America, distributes a "cocktail" of anti-AIDS drugs free to anyone who needs it. Last year, over 90,000 people received the drugs that would have cost each of them up to $15,000.
Thanks largely to the drug handout, in just four years the number of AIDS deaths in Brazil has fallen from 11,024 to 4,136. The program has been hailed by doctors as a model for other developing countries, where few can afford expensive treatment.
By manufacturing most of the drugs itself, the government reduced costs by as much as 79 per cent. But Brazil has achieved those savings by ignoring drug patents.
Brazil spends about $88 million a year, or 28 percent of its anti-AIDS budget, on Nelfinavir every year. About a quarter of all Brazilian AIDS patients use the drug.
Last week, scientists at the government's Farmanguinhos lab said they had successfully copied Nelfinavir and were subjecting it to equivalency tests expected to last three months.
According to the Health Ministry, the government will realise a 40 per cent savings by making the drug at Farmanguinhos.