Why we need a patent pool:
MSF field teams are faced more and more often with the heavy task of telling people that there are simply no more treatment options left to them. Hard for our staff, but devastating for the patients who find themselves in this situation. We desperately need to get hold of new HIV/AIDS drugs!
The human face to this crisis:
"I don’t know what is going to happen to me. If there’s no such thing that can help me, I know that I’m going to die. And then who’s going to look after my children?" Thembisa Mkhosana, Khayelitsha, April 2009. Watch this video
We need to push for the pool!
Thembisa and others in her situation are in desperate need of newer affordable HIV/AIDS drugs. Some of these drugs ARE already available and are in use in rich countries. But people with HIV/AIDS in poor countries can’t get hold of them. A patent pool is one way we could ensure that Thembisa can get hold of these existing drugs as well as new AIDS drugs in the future.
There is a patent pool in the making...
Right now, UNITAID, the international financing mechanism to help scale up AIDS treatment, is establishing such a patent pool. That’s the good news.
But for the patent pool to work, we need the drug companies and institutions who own these patents to put their patents in the pool as well as generic companies to commit to manufacturing the drugs."
"We believe if structured appropriately, Unitaid's patent pool can play a critical role in expanding access to antiretroviral treatment for patients around the world by encouraging the development of new fixed-dose combinations and paediatric formulations, lowering prices, while respecting intellectual property," Greg Alton, senior vice president, Gilead Sciences.