Patent Pools

Several pharmaceutical companies have abandoned HIV drug discount programs in middle-income countries, according to an HIV drug price report released by MSF.

Pharmaceutical company Gilead's move to license several HIV/AIDS drugs to the Medicines Patent Pool could improve access but excludes several countries with many people living with HIV.

The patent pool is a better solution: Johnson & Johnson and these other companies should sit down at the negotiating table. By joining up, they can make a huge impact on public health at a price they can easily afford.

Johnson & Johnson, which holds patents on three key new HIV drugs desperately needed throughout the developing world, has so far refused to license these patents to the Medicines Patent Pool.

I am writing on behalf of MSF to express our disappointment that J&J has not yet placed any patent into the Medicines Patent Pool and that it has announced in a recent letter to the Medicines Patent Pool that it is not ready to engage in formal negotiations.

Geneva/New York – September 30, 2010 – The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced today it will license a patent for an HIV medicine to the Medicines Patent Pool, a mechanism designed to boost access to more affordable AIDS drugs in the developing world. The move acts as a wake-up call to pharmaceutical companies to put patents on key AIDS medicines into the pool, said the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).

Geneva, December 15, 2009 – In a decisive step to improve access to medicines in the developing world, the Executive Board of UNITAID, the international health financing agency, has given the green light for a patent pool for AIDS medicines to open for business.

Eric Goemaere hopes the patent pool will work out so he doesn't have to watch his patients in Khayelitsha die. In the U.S. HIV patients have a 69-year life expectancy. But his patients in Khayelitsha are running out of options after only 8 years on therapy. "I don't accept the principle of double standards," he says. "If it's possible to get 69 years of life in the U.S., it should be possible to get something comparable in South Africa."

A week since the campaign was launched, well over 7,000 e-mails have been sent to the drug companies by supporters from Japan to Mexico, Myanmar to Burkina Faso.

New York/London, September 30, 2009 – The international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) today called on nine of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies to help accelerate the availability of new treatments for millions of people living with HIV/AIDS, by pooling their patents on a list of key HIV medicines.

When drug companies put their patents into a patent pool, they still get their royalties, while other companies use the patents to make cheaper drugs. Everyone wins.

With a dire need for newer medications, a shortfall in funding and no increases on the horizon, the AIDS emergency in the developing world is far from over. Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) spoke out at the International AIDS Society Conference held in July in Cape Town, South Africa, to push for urgent action.

MSF welcomes recognition by UK drugs company GlaxoSmithKline that patents act as a barrier to research and development and that patent pools offer new ways to stimulate research into neglected diseases. Promises now need to be turned into action.

Ellen ‘t Hoen, Policy Advocacy Director of MSF’s Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines, outlines how the a patent pool would work and what benefits it could bring.

Geneva, July 9, 2008 -  “UNITAID has shown great vision and understanding of what needs to be done - this could potentially have a big impact, both for access to medicines and for medical innovation," said Ellen ‘t Hoen, Director of Policy at MSF’s Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines.