the problem is of course that this bloody drug is under patent application by a company called Gilead Sciences, a huge company raking in the profits...
I quote from Businessweek: "...The product called Atripla, hit the market in July 2006, and bought in sales of 205.7 million dollars by December 2006...a strong launch for a drug that analysts estimate could become a $ 2 billion-a- year hit..." (that's John Martin, CEO of Gilead since 96)
On the other hand, Alternative Law Forum, ALF, based in Bangalore has filed a pre grant opposition on the premise that it involves only addition of a salt (fumaric acid) to an existing compound (Tenofovir Disoproxil) and is therefore not an invention...
Of course, patients with HIV AIDS faced a similar problem with GSK (GlaxoSmith Kline) filing a patent application for Combivir, another fixed dose drug containing two essential elements...
the companies say that if the patents are not granted, then it would be tantamount to the Indian government blocking innovation in the field of medicine, and it would violate internation patent laws, and of course discourage investment in India, discourage R&D in India and the list goes on..
The reality my friends, is that people are DYING, because they can't afford ART...not the second line onwards anyway, and to come back to this person I met, she was on the first line of ART and she was telling me about people she knew who were on the second line and how they couldn't afford it...how the Karnataka government had just given up on people who were beyond the first line...their focus is now on prevention..anyway the people who are on second line are going to die..so who cares..lets not allow more people to get HIV AIDS..and this is the esteemed government stance..in not so many words of course...
Anyway, if I remember right, the Karnataka government was supposed to put up 42 ART centres all over Karnataka. These centres were supposed to subsidize ART for people who couldn't afford it...as of September last year, there were 11 in Karnataka...and even these, as far as I know, give out only the first line to patients...
and the story just keeps getting worse...this lady that I met the other day and who was on the first line, tells me, " I have to eat eight to nine times a day, because the medicines I take suck out the nutrients and energy from my body. If i don't keep eating throughout the day, then I faint...and its happened to me several times. I work for a NGO on sexual minorities, and they are starved for funds...you know I get paid only Rs. 4500, and all my money goes on food and medication...I'm finished if I go to second line...the government doesn't care about people like us. To them we are as good as dead"
The biggest pity for me is that nobody cares anymore...it was an issue when the patents issue came out..i'm not writing anything new here..its all there on the net, on the papers..if one cares to look...the point is that the media has to move on, we have to move on and the issue is dying in silence, along with all the patients who cannot afford the medication....
We care to find out only if family or friends get affected..otherwise, its news, we feel pity, and then something like a Abhishek Aishwarya wedding has to come up and everything else is forgotten....I guess I really am bitter about this thing...what is really needed is public support, some pressure from the public not to grant these guys those patents...and get some signature petitions going by us...after all we are what is called the "civil society"...
but i know that this is just a stupid blog, nobody will care and the issue will go on..some of us will fight, others will have selective amnesia...what the hell, life goes on
1 comment:
this definitely needs to go public....... ill find the space!
it bothers me immensely!
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