Drug firms sue S.Africa in AIDS medicines row
A group of more than 40 drug
companies is taking the South African government to court in a
bid to stop the uncontrolled importation or manufacture of cut-
price versions of patented AIDS drugs, officials said on
Sunday.
Ben Hirschler, European pharmaceuticals correspondent - Reuters
The action, brought by the South African pharmaceutical
manufacturers association on behalf of its members, will be
heard in the Pretoria High Court on March 5, bringing to a head
a three-year-old intellectual property dispute.
London-based GlaxoSmithKline, the world's largest supplier
of HIV/AIDS medicines, said the industry was committed to
supplying cheap AIDS medicines to Africa but was alarmed by
implications of a law passed by former President Nelson
Mandela in 1997.
"Clause 15c gives the health minister total power to dismiss
patents without any process whatsoever. That is what the
companies object to," company spokesman Phil Thomson told
Reuters.
A South African Health Ministry official in Pretoria said the
government would defend the action, seeing it as important to
ensure the government has the right to obtain cheap drugs to
fight the AIDS epidemic sweeping the country.
"The government wants to legalise the parallel importation of
these drugs. It has legislation in place but this is on hold
because the drug companies have opposed it and have
challenged it on the grounds of intellectual property laws," Jo-
Anne Collinge of the ministry told Reuters.
Of the world's 34 million people infected with HIV, the virus
that causes AIDS, 25 million live in sub-Saharan Africa but only
a tiny proportion receive the anti-retroviral drugs which have
slashed death rates in the developed world.
The South African dispute is a thorn in the side of the
international drugs industry which is eager to prevent the
uncontrolled spread of generic AIDS drugs in the developing
world that might leak back on to high-price markets in Europe
and North America.
Elsewhere in Africa, the drugs industry has been working
with the United Nations to supply cut-price drugs to
governments in a controlled way.
Senegal and Uganda both clinched AIDS drugs supply
agreements under the U.N. Accelerating Access Initiative last
year. They are expected to be joined by Swaziland, Kenya,
Central African Republic, Botswana and Gabon in 2001.
South Africa has not signed up to the initiative. (Additional
reporting by Allan Seccombe in Johannesburg)
