Press Release - UNITAID Patent Pool - 6th IAS Conference on HIV Pathogenesis, Treatment and Prevention

Press Release - AIDES - Coalition PLUS - European AIDS Treatment Group - The international community of women living with HIV and AIDS, Forum della Società civile italiana sull’ HIV/AIDS

Rome, Tuesday, July 19, 2011

6th IAS Conference on HIV Pathogenesis, Treatment and Prevention

Miss Promises strikes again!

After Deauville, Miss Promises arrived in Rome to demand that Merck, Johnson&Johnson and Abbott enter the UNITAID Patent Pool.

Although the scientific community is presenting major advances at the 6th IAS conference that could end the HIV epidemic, some pharmaceutical companies are delaying treatment to millions of people living with HIV in developing countries.

Today, AIDS patients in poor countries lack access to the life saving antiretroviral drugs: rilpivirine, darunavir and etravirine (manufactured by Johnson&Johnson), raltegravir (manufactured by Merck), and ritonavir (manufactured by Abbott) because the prices are too high and there is no generic version these medicines.

The only way to reduce drug prices to a level close to their manufacturing price is by competition from generic producers globally. In poor countries - home to most of the patients who need Merck, Abbott and Johnson&Johnson medicines - every dollar added to the price of antiretroviral drugs deprives additional hundreds of thousands of people of the means to access medicines.

To end this monopoly, J&J, Abbott and Merck have been requested to add their patents to the UNITAID Patent Pool since October 2010, to allow generic companies to produce generic antiretrovirals, in a large part of the world.

However, these pharmaceutical companies have been persistently refusing this proposal. Even though J&J, Abbott and Merck have entered their patents into the pool for certain molecules, they still limit the number of countries allowed to import them – only 3 companies out of the 7 generics are authorized to manufacture; only 60 of the 120 countries are allowed to import them. As a result of lack of competition and insufficient economies of scale, prices that cannot be reduced, Abbott is even refusing any generic form of ritonavir.

If these companies accept the production of generic forms of their anti-HIV drugs in developing countries by a large number of generic companies, they will significantly increase patient access to their treatments and save millions of lives. Given the preventive role of antiretroviral drugs, Merck, J&J and Abbott would therefore contribute to the eradication of HIV and AIDS instead of being a barrier to saving lives.

Last June in New York UN Member States took the courageous commitment to have an additional 9 million people on treatment by 2015. The only way to achieve this is by globally raising funds to fight HIV & AIDS and by decreasing the price of medicines while promoting production of generic treatments.

AIDES, the European AIDS Treatment Group, the international community of women living with HIV and AIDS, the Forum della Società civile italiana sull’ HIV/AIDS & Coalition PLUS call on Merck, J&J and Abbott to join the Patent Pool thereby allowing production their antiretroviral in the South. If not they will be accomplices to HIV transmission and the death of millions of HIV positive people.

«J&J’s laboratories are famous for Neutrogena creams, baby talc and Cadum shampoo» Miss Promises says. «Yet, no one knows that at the same time, they are actively blocking the price reduction of life saving HIV medicines including those to the very babies they say they want to help».

Media contacts:

AIDES: Francesca Belli 00 33 6 10 25 52 03 / Marie Yared: 00 33 6 03 85 09 35

European AIDS Treatment Group: Ana Lucia Cardoso 00 32 491 348 312

The International Community of Women living with HIV and AIDS: Louise Binder 00 33 6 03 85 09 35