India: The days of cheap treatments for millions of Aids patients around the world are coming to an end, health agencies warned last night, after the Indian parliament passed a bill that makes it illegal to copy patented drugs.
The practice of copying patented drugs has made medicines affordable for patients around the world. The parliament's move was to fulfil India's commitment to the World Trade Organisation's intellectual property regime.
The copycat drugs industry in India has forced down the annual cost of Aids treatment from $15,000 a patient to a little more than $200 in less than 10 years.
The country's "generics" pharmaceutical industry now provides treatment to half the 700,000 HIV-infected people in developing countries.
The supply of cheap medicines was only possible because Indian law hitherto had no product patent constraints.
Critics say the new law will cut off the pipeline of inexpensive future drugs, such as the three-in-one pill of anti-retrovirals for Aids sufferers.
"Under the new legislation we will see new medicines only available for the rich, while old treatments will be for the poor," said Ellen't Hoen, director of policy advocacy and research at relief agency Medecins sans Frontieres.
"Many people are building up resistance to the first generation of drugs and will need the newer treatments. But without the Indian drugs industry, where will they get cheap drugs from?"
Campaigners say African countries will find it almost impossible to fund the new medicines. "In Cameroon we pay $200 a year for each Aids patient's treatment, which is an Indian generic manufacturer's product," said Fatima Hassan of South Africa's Treatment Action Campaign.
"The latest drugs are only supplied by western multinationals and they cost $4,800 a year. We cannot afford those prices." - (Guardian Service)