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Tens of thousands of people being treated for AIDS will suffer if Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis succeeds in changing India's patent law, the humanitarian agency Medecins Sans Frontieres warned on Monday.
Novartis is challenging a specific provision of India's patent law that, if overturned, would see patents being granted far more widely, heavily restricting the availability of affordable generic medicines, MSF says.
"If they hit India it basically cuts off the lifeline for generic medicines. They're going for the jugular," MSF spokesman James Lorenz added.
India's generic drugs form the backbone of MSF's AIDS programmes, in which 80,000 people in 30 countries receive treatment.
"We are reaching a quarter of the people who need antiretroviral treatment in sub-Saharan Africa," says Ivy Mwangi, an MSF doctor. "Rapid scale-up in treatment is only possible with the availability and affordability of generic drugs, most of which are produced in India."
MSF says spurious patents on "new" drugs of insignificant difference – like a drug becoming a capsule rather than a pill and no longer requiring refrigeration – are threatening lives in the developing world.
More at The New Scientist
Tens of thousands of people being treated for AIDS will suffer if Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis succeeds in changing India's patent law, the humanitarian agency Medecins Sans Frontieres warned on Monday.
Novartis is challenging a specific provision of India's patent law that, if overturned, would see patents being granted far more widely, heavily restricting the availability of affordable generic medicines, MSF says.
"If they hit India it basically cuts off the lifeline for generic medicines. They're going for the jugular," MSF spokesman James Lorenz added.
India's generic drugs form the backbone of MSF's AIDS programmes, in which 80,000 people in 30 countries receive treatment.
"We are reaching a quarter of the people who need antiretroviral treatment in sub-Saharan Africa," says Ivy Mwangi, an MSF doctor. "Rapid scale-up in treatment is only possible with the availability and affordability of generic drugs, most of which are produced in India."
MSF says spurious patents on "new" drugs of insignificant difference – like a drug becoming a capsule rather than a pill and no longer requiring refrigeration – are threatening lives in the developing world.
More at The New Scientist
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