There’s a new health minister in Bangkok, Chaiya Sasomsab, and he vows to review the ministry’s announcement to issue compulsory licences for four cancer meds. His predecessor, Mongkol na Songkhla, had just approved the licenses to override the patents on the drugs last month. But Chaiya tells The Bangkok Post that he wants to review whether it was the right decision to break patents on the drugs - 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.

Mongkol caused an international uproar with his decision to advocate compulsory licensing in order to boost access to costly meds under patents. But the policy has advantages and disadvantages, says Chaiya. Decisionmakers have to weigh patients’ access to medication and patent violation problems, he tells the paper. His remarks come amid reports that PhRMA is lobbying Washington to take tough action against the country for its decision to break patents. The US Trade Rep last year placed Thailand on its Priority Watch list.

On cancer drugs, he wanted to see whether the number of patients in need of those four drugs was high enough to necessitate compulsory licensing, and whether those patients had any difficulty accessing the four drugs. And he plans to announce his policy to executives of the Public Health Ministry today.