A plan by Public Health Minister Chaiya Sasomsab to review the policy on compulsory licensing for four cancer drugs has hit a major obstacle after officials from three ministries found that it cannot be revoked, The Bangkok Post reports. Chaiya says permanent secretaries of the commerce, foreign affairs and public health ministries have concluded that the ministerial announcements on four cancer drugs made by former public health minister Mongkol na Songkhla were legitimate and could not be lifted.

Although Chaiya could not change the policy, a source tells the Post that the government might not take any further action to bypass the patents of cancer drugs. The meeting of the three ministries was ordered by Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej last week to decide if it should go ahead with the previous government’s plan to break the cancer drug patents.

Mongkol signed four ministerial announcements on Jan. 4 to individually license Taxotere, produced by Sanofi-Aventis, Roche’s Tarceva, and Femara, which is sold by Novartis and Gleevec, which is sold by Novartis. But Mongkol struck a deal with Novartis after the drugmaker agreed to supply Gleevec free to more than 900 patients under its philanthropic programme.

In a forum about Thai policy on compulsory licensing yesterday, Foundation for Consumers manager Saree Ongsomwang said health activists and networks of cancer patients and people living with HIV/Aids were monitoring government actions on CL. ”We will definitely not agree with the government if the CL policy for cancer drugs has to be shelved or delayed until the US Trade Representative finishes reviewing the list of countries receiving export benefits from the US Generalised System of Preferences in April,” she said.

Pongthep Wongwatcharapaiboon, a rural doctor at Na Noi hospital in Nan province, said the poor would be most affected if the government did not extend access to cancer drugs through CL. Cancer drugs were very expensive and available only at private hospitals and large medical schools in urban areas. The lack of financial support from the National Health Security Office, which runs the universal healthcare scheme, made it impossible for the 626 community hospitals across the country to treat cancer patients in remote areas.

Sarah Ireland, an Oxfam regional director for East Asia, urged the government to continue with CL for cancer drugs and other life-saving medicines so that poor people would have greater access to them. Thailand should be a leader for low and middle-income countries in exercising its flexibility within the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (Trips) to widen public access to these medicines, she added.

Source: The Bangkok Post