Victory Pharmacy of the Poor
Faithfully reflects the text in the last newsletter
Doctors Without Borders.
- India will continue to develop drugs for developing countries. Rejected the application by Novartis against the Indian patent law. Relief of millions of patients and doctors.
The Chennai High Court issued a landmark ruling that preserves the Indian Patent Act and gives the wrong Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis, who wanted to declare that the legislation enabling Indian industries to produce generic equivalents of essential drugs and life-saving, affordable for developing countries.
"This ruling is a big relief for millions of patients and doctors who work in the poorest countries and depend largely on drugs produced in India says Raffaella Ravinetti, president of Doctors Without Borders humanitarian in Italy. The Indiana Court reaffirms the right of countries like India to enact laws that take ownership of all the safeguards provided for in international agreements on trade and avoid the risk of a further restriction on the ability to produce generic drugs, which are essential to meet the needs public health of vulnerable populations. We call upon multinational drug companies and wealthy countries to comply with Indian law and stop pushing for the countries development schemes to adopt even more restrictive regarding patents on medicines. "
Novartis had dragged to court to force the Indian government to amend the Indian Patent Act in order to obtain an easier and broader intellectual property protection for its products. Novartis said that the Indian law that allows certain extent the manufacture of generic versions of certain key medicines does not respect the rules established by the World Trade Organization. But these complaints complaints were deemed unfounded by the first ' High Court of Chennai.
Until 2005, India did not recognize patents on drugs: data from 2005 within which the World Trade Organization has asked countries in the developing world to implement the new patent rules, India has passed a law that provides for some safeguards, such as that patents are granted only on real innovations. This means that companies wanting to patent simple improvements to a molecule already invented, in order to further extend the monopoly would be unsuccessful in India.
requested that Novartis is this clause for the patients were removed from Indian law. Had the court favor of the company would have drastically restricted the production of drugs generic "made in India that are crucial for the treatment of diseases in many developing countries.
"Doctors Without Borders is more than 100 thousand people living with HIV worldwide and as many as 84% \u200b\u200bof antiretroviral drugs that we prescribe, pre-qualified by the World Health comes from India explains Ravinetti -. Many governments of developing countries and other international agencies like UNICEF and the Clinton Foundation and also the PEPFAR, depend on Indian generic manufacturers for the supply of drugs against AIDS. must be allowed to continue to be the pharmacy of the developing world. "