In today’s Financial Times, Andrew Jack, Frances Williams and Michael Steen report on Dutch seizure of generic Abacavir in transit to Africa:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0a0a0a9e-0928-11de-b8b0-0000779fd2ac.html
Dozens of HIV patients have been placed at risk after the Dutch authorities seized consignments of Indian-made medicines shipped via Schipol airport for distribution to clinics in Nigeria, a multilateral agency yesterday said.
Officials claimed the drugs were counterfeits and -violated patent rules but Unitaid, the Geneva-based agency which paid for the medicines, demanded their release and said the claims were “misleading”.
The action – the latest seizure of drugs shipped via the Netherlands to developing countries – has highlighted tensions between European Union legislation and special patent rules on medicines agreed by the World Trade Organisation, which yesterday offered to intervene in the dispute.
The latest confiscation is particularly embarrassing because the drugs were paid for by the international donor governments which support Unitaid – including several EU nations such as France and the UK – and were to be distributed in Nigeria by the Clinton Foundation established by the former US president.
Dutch officials insisted the seizure reflected “friction” between EU and WTO rules.
A 2003 European Council regulation requires the seizure and destruction of counterfeits or goods violating intellectual property rights from third countries, even if they were only being shipped via the EU.
James Love of Knowledge Ecology International, an advocacy group that has helped raise concerns about the seizures, said the EU position was “indefensible”.
In other documents that KEI has reviewed, this case involved a shipment of 29,880 units of Abacavir from India to the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria, via the Schipol airport. The company shipping the product was Aurobindo, a well known and major supplier of Indian generic AIDS drugs to PEPFAR, the Global Fund and UNITAID.
Abacavir is a relatively expensive second line AIDS treatment, and in Africa is normally provided to patients who have developed resistance to a less expensive first line regime. It would be useful to have better information about this case, but based upon what is known so far, the Dutch Seizures at a minimum provided a risk of an interrupted supply of the drug to the patients. If so, this can contribute to further problems of drug resistance, according to numerous scientific studies on the relationship between multi-drug resistance and poor compliance involving Abacavir.
As noted in earlier blogs on this topic, the WTO head Pascal Lamy has now responded to the NGO letter about the seizures, linking the goods in transit issue to the WTO Doha Declaration on TRIPS and Public Health, and leaving to door open to WTO mediation if a WTO member makes a request for such mediation. The WHO Director General Dr. Margaret Chan has yet speak out on EU and Dutch policies on goods in transit.
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Update: See the UNITAID press statement on the seizures here.