Oxfam America Calls on US to Make Anti-Anthrax Medicine Available

Posted: 23 October 2001

Oxfam America is calling on the US to follow the lead of the Canadian government and issue a compulsory license to enable a local US manufacturer to supply Cipro. "The US insistence on protecting Bayer's patents should not be at the expense of people's lives," said Oxfam Senior Policy Advisor Severina Rivera.

Oxfam urged the Bush administration to support and not undermine U.S. Secretary of Human Services Tommy Thompson in his intention "to err on the side of caution in making sure people are protected." Thompson announced he is considering asking for legislation that would make it easier to approve generic production of Cipro (ciprofloxacin), which is under patent protection until 2003. This proposal and the immediate importation of generic equivalents from India, for example, would lower the cost to 1/30 of what Bayer charges for Cipro. "This is precisely the kind of policy option the US and every country should have available to it," said Rivera. "However, the US has led the opposition to developing-country attempts to secure these kind of policy options."

The US opposes even modest requests by developing countries seeking a pro-health interpretation of patent rules in the World Trade Organization at the next WTO ministerial in Doha, Qatar. The developing-country proposals ask for interpretations that: a) clearly recognize a country's right to determine the grounds for issuing compulsory licenses, to allow production and export in response to a license issued in a third country; b) to allow parallel importing.

"Compulsory licenses alone cannot be an everyday solution to the life and death problems of unaffordably priced medicines," said Rivera. Oxfam supports the African nations' call that the WTO consider reducing the length and scope of drug patents in order to stimulate price competition. Oxfam America is actively campaigning with 11 other Oxfam confederations to reform the Trade Related-aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS) in order to reduce the inequities of the subjective interpretation of patent rules to favor corporations and to shorten the length and scope of patent periods for medicines used to treat communicable diseases.