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Thai politicians are divided over the effects that a resumption of free trade negotiations with the United States could have on access to essential medicines. President Bush said in August that he intended to rekindle the FTA negotiations on ice since January 2006.
While no date has been set for reviving the talks, opposition politicians have requested the government to take a ‘firm stance’ to defend Thailand’s compulsory licensing policy in order to safeguard the public’s right to affordable life-saving medicines. In contrast, current commerce and health ministers, Chaiya Sasomsab and Chavarat Charnveerakul are said to be cool to the policy, under which at least half a dozen compulsory licences have been granted for drugs still under patent.
In July, more than 50 congressional Demoracts sent a letter to US Trade Representative Susan Schwab, urging her to keep up the pressure on the Thai government to limit the issuance of compulsory licences. While expressing support for the flexibilities available under the TRIPS Agreement, the signatories said they did not believe that “WTO Members intended those rules to be used to allow compulsory licenses as a matter of standard government policy.”
Between November 2006 and January 2007, Thailand issued compulsory licences for cancer drug efavirenz (marketed as Stocrin by patent holder Merck), AIDS cocktail lopinavir/ritonavir (patented as Kaletra by Abbott Laboratories) and blood thinner clopidogrel (Bristol Myers’ Plavix). At least efavirenz and lopinaver/ritonavir from are currently imported from India.
In March 2008, the government announced plans to start importing breast cancer medicine docetaxel from Indian generics manufacturer Dabur Pharma at a price 100 times lower than brandname Taxotere patented by Sanofi-Aventis. According to the MCOT news agency, compulsory licences have also been approved for two other cancer drugs: erlotinib (marketed as Tarceva by Roche) and letrozole (Femara, manufactured by Novartis).
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