A controversial Indian patents bill could threaten the lives of millions of people worldwide living with HIV-AIDS and cancer by banning companies from producing cheap copies of brand name drugs.
Global health activists and groups representing those living with the diseases in Asia, Africa and Latin America are putting intense pressure on the Indian parliament to change the bill.
Anand Grover, lawyer and convener of Affordable Medicines and Treatment Campaign, a non-governmental organisation says they are not against patents but are against the Indian bill in its present form which goes beyond what is required under TRIPS, an agreement on intellectual property rights under the World Trade Organisation. These rights are agreed upon by member countries of the WTO.
According to Grover, developing countries such as India did not have to provide patent protection under TRIPS, and many previous Indian committees have said that patents apply to new molecules only.
The new bill goes far beyond this by increasing the scope of patentability even to new dosages, combinations and formulations of known drugs, and in its present form would bar Indian firms from producing the "three-in-one" fixed dose combination of anti-retroviral drugs widely used to treat those living with HIV-AIDS in the developing world.
Ellen T'hoen of the France-based Medecins Sans Frontieres, one of the activists attending a discussion on patents in Bombay, says the wide patentability is clearly done to favour the multinational companies, and until now, Indian firms have been able to make cheaper versions of patented drugs as India's patent laws protect the process of manufacture rather than the medicines themselves.
Many big pharmaceutical companies are based in India's western economic hub and by putting together the drug in a different way, some have been able to produce generics of all well-known products. Activists claim drug prices would rise substantially in the long term once product patents come into existence.
Y.K. Sapru of Indian Cancer Patients Association says the bill is a sure shot way to an early death to many cancer patients as only elite patients would be able to afford the drugs.