The new health minister, who promised last week to review Bangkok’s controversial policy of issuing compulsory licenses, fears possible trade sanctions. The four cancer meds his predecessor targeted would cost $24 million to $27 million a year, which Chaiya Sasomsab tells Reuters “is not a big deal for the government to spend on the people’s health. We would lose much more than that if the United States decides to impose sanctions or boycott us over the issue.”

Former Health Minister Mongkol na Songkhla overrode Merck’s AIDS drug Efavirenz in late 2006, arguing that Thailand couldn’t afford patented drugs for a national health plan that covers about 80 percent of the country’s 63 million people. He later did the same on a Sanofi-Aventis heart med and an AIDS drug made by Abbott Labs, which then refused to register several new meds in Thailand. The moves caused a furor with many consumer groups applauding the moves, while the US Trade Rep placed Thailand on its Priority Watch list.

In his final weeks in office, Mongkol also targeted Taxotere, produced by Sanofi-Aventis, Roche’s Tarceva, and Femara, which is sold by Novartis. A compulsory license issued to make generic versions of Gleevec, a leukemia drug, was later cancelled after Novartis agreed to supply it free to hundreds of Thai patients. But Chaiya questions the legality, while health activists say they will hit the streets in protest if he scraps the licenses.

Mongkol has insisted he followed Thai laws and World Trade Organization rules, which allow countries to override a drug patent if it is deemed critical to public health as long as the medicines are meant for domestic use. However, Thailand’s Commerce officials have worried about the policy’s impact on relations with key trading partners, Europe and the US, home to several pharmaceutical giants.

Washington hasn’t threatened trade sanctions, but Chaiya says Thai Commerce Ministry officials fear a further downgrade could put Thailand at risk of retaliation. “We have to look at the big picture when we run the entire country,” says Chaiya, a veteran politician with no medical background.

Source: Reuters