The South African government and AIDS activists won a major victory yesterday when the world's leading pharmaceutical companies dropped their injunction attempt in the High Court in Pretoria. Their action had been intended to prevent the implementation of a South African law authorising the importation of cheap generic drugs.
The decision by the South Africa's Pharmaceutical Manufacturers' Association (PMA) - on which 38 pharmaceutical companies are represented - to withdraw its application to the Pretoria High Court led to victory celebrations outside the court, in South Africa as a whole and even beyond its borders.
In Dublin, the Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs, Ms Liz O'Donnell, welcomed the decision, saying she hoped it would facilitate the supply of much-needed affordable drugs to the South African people.
"This honourable decision will accelerate efforts to ensure that poor people in South Africa suffering with HIV/AIDS have access to life-saving drugs at affordable prices," she said in a statement. However she also warned that the issue was far from resolved.
The PMA had argued that the law was in contravention of the international agreement of Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), to which South Africa is a signatory.
It contended also that the importing of cheap medications constituted a potential threat to patients because there was no guarantee that companies producing them maintained the necessary controls.
But in the propaganda battle in the public arena these arguments appeared to make little impression. The motivation of the pharmaceutical companies was seen as protection of profits, or, more perjoratively, of putting profits before lives.
The significance of the withdrawal was aptly expressed in a joint statement by Oxfam, Medecines Sans Frontieres and the South African Treatment Action Campaign: "The outcome of the case signals a dramatic shift in the balance of power between developing countries and the drug companies. It sends a clear signal to the African heads of state that lives should and can take precedence over patents."