As a result, Thailand’s public health minister, Mongkol na Songkhla, cancelled a compulsory license for the leukemia drug. Novartis made a last minute offer agreeing to a government condition to provide Gleevec free to all patients under universal healthcare as a trade-off for not seeing its patent overriden, The Bangkok Post reports.

Novartis had previously insisted Gleevec would be provided for free only for patients who earn less than $9,600 a year. Mongkol had turned down the offer because health statistics showed that 10 million of the 48 million people under the state healthcare scheme would not be eligible, according to Vichai Chokewiwat, who chairs Thailand’s Government Pharmaceutical Organization.

An estimated 900 poor patients under the scheme, who have chronic myeloid leukaemia or another rare type of cancer, gastro-intestinal stromal tumour, could receive Gleevec through a philanthropic program to be sponsored Novartis. The drug is not available to the majority of people because of its high cost, about 3,600 baht, or $114 per tablet. Full treatment costs a patient up to $41,600 a year.

Vichai says the deal could be called off if Novartis revokes its philanthropic program. There would not be any memorandum of understanding between the two sides as was previously planned because ‘’sending the letter of intent was enough”, he adds. Meanwhile, he adds the ministry hasn’t received such a welcome response from the patent owners of three other cancer drugs, one of them also developed by Novartis.

The conditions offered by the drugmakers were too complicated and the government still plans to proceed with the compulsory licensing of the Femara breast cancer drug sold by Novartis, the Taxotere breast and lung cancer med made by Sanofi-Aventis, and Roche’s Tarceva lung cancer drug. Food and Drug Administration secretary-general Siriwat Tiptaradol says the agency has already included imatinib in the national drug list.