The Hindu Business Line : AIDS patients to protest in front of Abbott Labs

The protests at Abbott's Mumbai, New Delhi and Bangalore offices on Thursday are part of similar global protests in the US, South Korea, Brazil and Argentina.

Mumbai April 25 Patient-groups will protest in front of US-drug-maker Abbott offices in India in solidarity with AIDS patients in Thailand. AIDS patients are caught in the patent-related tussle between the Thai Government and the drug-maker over AIDS-drug Kaletra.

The protests at Abbott's Mumbai, New Delhi and Bangalore offices on Thursday are part of similar global protests in the US, South Korea, Brazil and Argentina. And the aim is not just to express solidarity with AIDS patients in Thailand, but also to urge the Indian Government to learn from their experience, said a representative with an AIDS advocacy organisation.

Generic Copies

The Thai Government has understood the problem, out of the total five lakh HIV-AIDS people, about 50,000 would need second-line medicines like Kaletra, Mr Anand Grover of Lawyers Collective told Business Line. Given the high price on Kaletra, Thailand threatened to issue a compulsory licence that would allow other companies to make generic copies of the same drug, with a royalty payment to the original drug-maker, Abbott in this case. The generic copies would work out less expensive to the patient and the Government. Abbott subsequently agreed to lower its price to $1,000, but even this too is expensive, he said.

In India, medicines used in the second-line of treatment of AIDS do not seem to be on the horizon for the Indian Government, he said. The Centre's plan is to provide anti-AIDS medicines to about three lakh of the over five lakh HIV/AIDS people in the country by 2011.

The lessons from the Thai experience are to urge the Indian Government to be aggressive in getting AIDS drugs for its people. The medicines prevent people from infecting another person and the second-line reinforces the prevention.

Abbott's patent on a soft-gel version of Kaletra (SG) had been abandoned at the patent office in India. Mr Grover pointed out that a patent application could be pending on the heat-stable version of Kaletra, suitable in countries like India. Cipla has a generic copy of the heat-stable Kaletra (a combination of lopinavir/ritonavir), priced at $1,560 per patient per year, a note from the advocacy group said.

An opposition on Abbott's patent application would be filed at the patent office, Mr Gover indicated. Kaletra is sold in middle-income countries, as defined by the World Bank, at $2,200 per patient per year, an Abbott spokesperson had told the correspondent in the past. Further, the company official had said that the patent-related developments in Thailand over Kaletra and the abandoning of the patent on Kaletra SG in India were not related.