AIDS Drugs Patent Pool Opens Easy Access for Poor Patients

Access to HIV drugs is a problem that came out along with the emergence of HIV/AIDS medications in developing countries, more notably in severely stricken lands such as Africa. And every time a drug is approved, poor countries in Asia, Africa and the rest of the world have to wait for several years before the new drug can become available in their area. With the makers of HIV drugs sharing intellectual property right with others, AIDS victims in these areas could soon get easier access to their most needed treatment medications.

Led by Gilead Sciences, the largest maker of HIV drugs, the Medicine Patent Pool expects to get other big drug makers to also sign-up. It is looking forward for get ViiV Healthcare, Squibb, Roche, Boehringer Ingelheim, Sequoia Pharmaceuticals, and more. If the patent pool gets the same deal from these drug makers, even the poorest among the 33 million HIV positive individuals will be able to afford AIDS medicines. It will create the kind of system that grants license technology to the patent holders, authorizing them to manufacture cheap generics, with modest royalties as payment.

With the existence of cheaper and more generics AIDS drugs, the flow of necessary medication to different poor countries across the horizon will become faster. Big pharmacies will get very little royalties especially in African countries, wherein generics drugs fall only at 1 or 2 percent of those in developed or high-income countries. It will be like a big uniform discount for usually high-priced branded products. But with such a sacrifice and success of the pool, poor countries can have an estimated savings of $1 billion annual drug spending.

Generic copies of tenofovir, emtricitabine, as well as the upcoming cobicistat, elvitegravir, and Quad were allowed by Gilead. Quad, in particular, is the combination of the different AIDS treatment drugs.

UNITAID, a health financing system, launched the medicine patent pool. And the U.S. National Institutes of Health was the first to sign-up in the pool in September, which was recently followed by Gilead Sciences.

This patent pool will not only benefit HIV patients, but also the health care industry in the said countries that have long been struggling with the high HIV infection rate as well as AIDS mortality rate and related deaths.