Bill to help sale of HIV drugs gains support

A federal private member's billaims to cut through the red tape hampering generic drug companies from shipping cheap HIV/AIDS drugs to developing countries.

On Wednesday, MPs will review New DemocratMP Judy Wasylycia-Leis's bill, designed to reform Canada's access to medicines law.

'We're starting to finally see that not everyone is seeing HIV infection as a death sentence in some of these low-income countries.' Dr. Jane Philpott

When Canadapassed its access to medicines legislation five years agowith support from all parties, it was lauded as a world leader.

The intent of the access to medicines regime was to allow generic drug manufacturers tocompete to supply less-expensive drugs to developing countries for diseases such as AIDS, malaria andtuberculosis.

Under the current legislation, generic drug makers mustobtain a special licence each time they want to sell a drug to a countryover a certain time, and pay royalties to the patent-holding drug companies on any such sales.

But the current law is not working, Wasylycia-Leis said.Since it was passed,the processhas provedso complicated that only one order of HIV drugs was ever made and sold. It reached Rwanda last year.

No generic drug manufacturer in Canada and no other developing country has indicated a willingness to go through the cumbersome process again, according to Wasylycia-Leis's website.

On Tuesday, 59 prominent Canadians, including former prime minister Paul Martin, former UN special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa Stephen Lewis, past international president of Mdecins Sans Frontires Dr. James Orbinski, andarts leader Karen Kain, published an open letterto Canadian members of Parliament and senatorsurging them to support proposed legislation to streamline the process.

If passed, the signatories to the lettersay the legislationwill:

• Reduce red tape by letting generic drug manufacturers fill multiple orders of the same drug to different countries under one simple licence, without a time limit.
• Maintain compensation by way of royalties paid to patent-holding drug companies.
• Come at no cost to taxpayers.

Preventable deaths

Last week, areport by the World Health Organization and Joint UN Program on HIV/AIDS, or UNAIDS, said newHIV infections have been reduced by 17 per cent over the past eight years,since the UN Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS was signed.

Michel Sidib, executive director of UNAIDS, credited the decline in part to HIV prevention.

"We're starting to finally see that not everyone is seeing HIV infection as a death sentence in some of these low-income countries," said Dr. Jane Philpott, an associate professor of family medicine at the University of Toronto, who spent years working in Africa much of it with people with HIV.

The Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network is lobbying MPsto support the private member's bill, which will be debated on Wednesday.So far, the NDP and Bloc Qubcois are solidly behind it.

"As we are fiddling here, people are dying, and those deaths are preventable," said Richard Elliott, executive director of the network. "We could be getting medicines out the door."