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      Driving a decade of change: HIV/AIDS, patents and access to medicines for all

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          Abstract

          Since 2000, access to antiretroviral drugs to treat HIV infection has dramatically increased to reach more than five million people in developing countries. Essential to this achievement was the dramatic reduction in antiretroviral prices, a result of global political mobilization that cleared the way for competitive production of generic versions of widely patented medicines.

          Global trade rules agreed upon in 1994 required many developing countries to begin offering patents on medicines for the first time. Government and civil society reaction to expected increases in drug prices precipitated a series of events challenging these rules, culminating in the 2001 World Trade Organization's Doha Declaration on the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights and Public Health. The Declaration affirmed that patent rules should be interpreted and implemented to protect public health and to promote access to medicines for all. Since Doha, more than 60 low- and middle-income countries have procured generic versions of patented medicines on a large scale.

          Despite these changes, however, a "treatment timebomb" awaits. First, increasing numbers of people need access to newer antiretrovirals, but treatment costs are rising since new ARVs are likely to be more widely patented in developing countries. Second, policy space to produce or import generic versions of patented medicines is shrinking in some developing countries. Third, funding for medicines is falling far short of needs. Expanded use of the existing flexibilities in patent law and new models to address the second wave of the access to medicines crisis are required.

          One promising new mechanism is the UNITAID-supported Medicines Patent Pool, which seeks to facilitate access to patents to enable competitive generic medicines production and the development of improved products. Such innovative approaches are possible today due to the previous decade of AIDS activism. However, the Pool is just one of a broad set of policies needed to ensure access to medicines for all; other key measures include sufficient and reliable financing, research and development of new products targeted for use in resource-poor settings, and use of patent law flexibilities. Governments must live up to their obligations to protect access to medicines as a fundamental component of the human right to health.

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          Most cited references36

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          Expansion of cancer care and control in countries of low and middle income: a call to action.

          Substantial inequalities exist in cancer survival rates across countries. In addition to prevention of new cancers by reduction of risk factors, strategies are needed to close the gap between developed and developing countries in cancer survival and the effects of the disease on human suffering. We challenge the public health community's assumption that cancers will remain untreated in poor countries, and note the analogy to similarly unfounded arguments from more than a decade ago against provision of HIV treatment. In resource-constrained countries without specialised services, experience has shown that much can be done to prevent and treat cancer by deployment of primary and secondary caregivers, use of off-patent drugs, and application of regional and global mechanisms for financing and procurement. Furthermore, several middle-income countries have included cancer treatment in national health insurance coverage with a focus on people living in poverty. These strategies can reduce costs, increase access to health services, and strengthen health systems to meet the challenge of cancer and other diseases. In 2009, we formed the Global Task Force on Expanded Access to Cancer Care and Control in Developing Countries, which is composed of leaders from the global health and cancer care communities, and is dedicated to proposal, implementation, and evaluation of strategies to advance this agenda. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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            Antiretroviral treatment of adult HIV infection: 2010 recommendations of the International AIDS Society-USA panel.

            Recent data regarding the consequences of untreated human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection and the expansion of treatment choices for antiretroviral-naive and antiretroviral-experienced patients warrant an update of the International AIDS Society-USA guidelines for the use of antiretroviral therapy in adults with HIV infection. To provide updated recommendations for management of HIV-infected adults, using antiretroviral drugs and laboratory monitoring tools available in the international, developed-world setting. This report provides guidelines for when to initiate antiretroviral therapy, selection of appropriate initial regimens, patient monitoring, when to change therapy, and what regimens to use when changing. A panel with expertise in HIV research and clinical care reviewed relevant data published or presented at selected scientific conferences since the last panel report through April 2010. Data were identified through a PubMed search, review of scientific conference abstracts, and requests to antiretroviral drug manufacturers for updated clinical trials and adverse event data. New evidence was reviewed by the panel. Recommendations were drafted by section writing committees and reviewed and edited by the entire panel. The quality and strength of the evidence were rated and recommendations were made by full panel consensus. Patient readiness for treatment should be confirmed before initiation of antiretroviral treatment. Therapy is recommended for asymptomatic patients with a CD4 cell count 500/microL. Components of the initial and subsequent regimens must be individualized, particularly in the context of concurrent conditions. Patients receiving antiretroviral treatment should be monitored regularly; treatment failure should be detected and managed early, with the goal of therapy, even in heavily pretreated patients, being HIV-1 RNA suppression below commercially available assay quantification limits.
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              Can patents deter innovation? The anticommons in biomedical research.

              The "tragedy of the commons" metaphor helps explain why people overuse shared resources. However, the recent proliferation of intellectual property rights in biomedical research suggests a different tragedy, an "anticommons" in which people underuse scarce resources because too many owners can block each other. Privatization of biomedical research must be more carefully deployed to sustain both upstream research and downstream product development. Otherwise, more intellectual property rights may lead paradoxically to fewer useful products for improving human health.
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                Author and article information

                Journal
                J Int AIDS Soc
                Journal of the International AIDS Society
                BioMed Central
                1758-2652
                2011
                27 March 2011
                : 14
                : 15
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Medicines Patent Pool Initiative, UNITAID Secretariat, Geneva, Switzerland
                [2 ]SECTION27, Braamfontein, Johannesburg, South Africa
                [3 ]HIV Unit, Division of Infectious Disease, Geneva University Hospital, Geneva, Switzerland
                [4 ]Médecins Sans Frontières Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines, Geneva, Switzerland
                [5 ]Sustainability Science Program, Center for International Development, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
                Article
                1758-2652-14-15
                10.1186/1758-2652-14-15
                3078828
                21439089
                129f1146-a2ca-47cc-998d-527aa0785ae5
                Copyright ©2011 Hoen et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

                This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

                History
                : 1 October 2010
                : 27 March 2011
                Categories
                Review

                Infectious disease & Microbiology
                Infectious disease & Microbiology

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