The move comes after a month of protests against plans by Bangkok’s new government to review the controversial policy of issuing compulsory licenses. Under pressure from health activists and doctors who campaigned to have him sacked, Chaiya Sasomsab, the new Health Minister, decided that overriding patents on three cancer meds would save Thailand more than $100 million over the next five years, Reuters reports.

“The findings have convinced me to go ahead with the compulsory licenses since the ministry’s policy is to give patients good access to quality drugs at cheap prices,” says Chaiya, after a review by a panel of Health Ministry officials. The three cancer drugs are Taxotere, which is made by Sanofi-Aventis, Roche’s Tarceva, and Femara, which is sold by Novartis. A license issued on Novartis’ Gleevec was canceled last month after the drugmaker agreed to supply the med for free to hundreds of patients.

The decision is a blow to drugmakers and biotechs, which had lobbied hard to reverse the policy launched by the previous government. The issue now is what, if any action the US Trade Rep will take. Last month, the US Trade Rep dampened speculation that sanctions would be sought under World Trade Organization rules, but Thailand’s policy is being reviewed as pharma presses for a downgrade in status.

Chaiya had ordered the policy review shortly after a democratically-elected government took power in February, saying the idea of issuing compulsory licenses was a “politically correct decision, but not legally correct.” At the time, he said Bangkok could afford the full cost of the drugs, if it meant avoiding trade retaliation by the US, which, of course, is home to some of the world’s biggest drug firms.

But when Chaiya, a businessman with no medical training, fired the Health Ministry’s top official negotiating cheaper prices from foreign drug firms, outraged health activists and doctors launched a campaign to remove him. Today, he says the ministry would buy cheaper versions of the cancer drugs from generic producers, such as Indian firms which already supply generic HIV/AIDS meds to Thailand.

Under World Trade Organisation rules, countries can issue a compulsory licence to make or buy generic versions of patented drugs deemed critical to public health as long as the medicines are meant for domestic use. Thailand’s former Health Minister, Mongkol na Songkhla, overrode the patent on Merck’s Efavirenz AIDS drug 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.

A few months later, he overrode the patent on a Sanofi-Aventis heart med and an AIDS drug made by Abbott Laboratories, which refused to register several new medicines in Thailand. Mongkol, who targeted the four cancer drugs weeks before he left office, has defended the policy, even though drugmakers accused him of stealing their intellectual property rights.