Patents for Public Health in Peru
by Gabriela Mendoza Mendizabal, translated by Jorge Vargas
Peru, like other Latin American countries, produces a concerning amount of top quality products. However, to gain deserved spots in the large foreign markets is extremely difficult.
Therefore, a free trade agreement becomes very attractive and beneficial for national production. A free trade agreement can be used as an excellent lever for exchange, taking care of the interests of the nations involved and fomenting the development of the nation.
Nevertheless, one would have to observe and check the free trade agreement with the United States since it’s around the corner and it promises much in various different sectors but which overlooks and harms one extremely important one: the chapter on Intellectual Property, is one of the most sensitive, given that it includes new forms of protection for medicinal patents and puts at risk the health of millions of Peruvians. Millions of lives.
Having already had 20 years of exclusive worldwide patent protection, the United States is now looking to amplify the time period of patent protection – the implementation of ‘second-hand patents,’ and protection of data, amongst other things –, which would further slow down the entry of generic versions of these medications into the Peruvian market, limiting access to generic drugs and with them, the possibility of guaranteeing the right to health of the individual, especially of the poorest persons who can’ afford the drugs provided by the large companies.
Similarly, the United States is looking to extend the list of items that can be patented – the environment of patentability – and the US is trying to patent therapeutic methods, surgeries, and diagnosing techniques, which would, in practice, mean forcing payment for the usage of innovative medical methods, once more limiting access to healthcare. This act of pretension is even more offensive since the US is also looking to patent plants and animals which might have a genetic variation – a move that would endanger the bio-genetic resources of our nation, Peru.
To clarify the idea of this zero-sum measure regarding generic drugs, one could consider, for instance, that to cover the cost of treatment for bacterial Meningitis, a Peruvian worker on minimum wage, receiving a wage of $100 for every 30 work days, would need to work 50 days while a treatment using generic medicines would only cost five days of work.
The problem worsens – as could be expected – when one deals with more delicate and demanding disease. The program for attention of HIV/AIDS in the Ministry of Health in Peru is calculated with the prices of the original brand for a period of five years, making it be $143 million. With generic drugs, that price would cost only $53 million, which is almost a third of the brand-oriented strategy.
Public health comes above commercial interests. And there is no way in which we can limit the right to health by restricting the access of generic drugs.
