As Thailand’s new government considers whether to continue with compulsory licensing, which has involving overriding patents on several branded drugs, a World Health Organization mission confirms that the controversial policy is legal, PharmaTimes reports.

Thailand first made use of the World Trade Organization compulsory licence provisions in November 2006 in order to manufacture a generic version of Merck’s Stocrin HIV/AIDS drug, after health minister Mongkol Na Songkhla argued the cost of the imported branded version was unaffordable. Since then, Bangkok issued six more licences, but the new health minister, Chaiya Sasomsab, wants to reverse the policy, questioning its legality and warning of trade sanctions imposed by the US and Europe.

However, the report of a seven-member WHO trade mission confirms that the use of compulsory licences “is one of several cost-containment mechanisms that may be used for patented essential medicines not affordable to the people or to public health insurance schemes.” The report acknowledges that such processes are often complicated, so: “it is therefore important to establish clear decision-making processes, including the determination or designation of the authorities or bodies charged with responsibility for the various stages of decision-making,” PharmaTimes writes.

The report doesn’t actually evaluate Thailand’s particular use of the process, pointing out that this varies in different countries, “with some adopting administrative procedures and others a mixed system, where initial decisions relating to the granting of compulsory licences and compensation are made administratively and appeals are made to the judicial system.”

Supporters of the policy welcomed the statement. The mission included WTO reps, the United Nations Development Programme and legal experts, according to PharmaTimes. The team spent a week this past month meeting with Thai officials, drugmakers, patients and consumer groups as the new government’s commerce, foreign affairs and health ministers considered the policy’s future.

Chaiya suggests that paying for drugs could cost less than if the US decided to impose sanctions or a boycott. The US Trade Representative placed Thailand on its Priority Watch list for its patent transgressions in 2007, and BIO last week wrote the US Trade Rep asking for Thailand to be placed on Foreign Priority, the most severe classification.

However, Jon Ungphakorn, chairman of the Thai NGO Coordinating Committee on Development, commented this week that while Thailand has so far issued only seven compulsory licences, between 1969 and 1993 Canada “issued 613 licences, enjoyed the lowest prices for drugs in the developed world and had a more vigorous pharmaceutical industry than the US.”