Pharmaceutical News 2.0

Excerpt from statement on compulsory licensing:

“PhRMA is deeply troubled by the recent trend toward the issuance of compulsory licenses for pharmaceutical products. This misguided focus on short-term ‘budget fixes’ could come at a far greater long-term cost, potentially limiting important incentives for research and development that are necessary to positively impact the lives of millions of patients worldwide.”

Read the entire statement on compulsory licensing here.

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BEIJING, Dec. 9 (Xinhua) — China’s State Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine (SATCM) on Tuesday blacklisted 74 websites for selling fake Chinese herbal medicine.

Names of those sites have been made public on SATCM’s website at www.satcm.gov.cn.

Consumers are warned of buying any type of medicine from organizations such as the International Diabetes Institute of Genetic Engineering (www.010gbw.com), the China Research Center for Chinese Medicine (www.gxykf8.cn) and the China Cardiovascular Research Institute at (www.gxy007.cn).

Drugs sold on those websites claimed to be able to cure high blood pressure, skin diseases, diabetes and tumors.

SATCM has reported the 74 websites to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology for further investigation. Those sites could be shut down.

As of now, they are still open.

Only one man, from the Diabetes Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Traditional Medicine website called Xinhua back. However, he hung up when he was asked about medicines for sale.

Yan Jiangying, spokeswoman with the State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA), said only those sites with the SFDA license of Internet medicine business can sell over-the-counter (OTC) drugs to individuals.

“So far, only ten websites across China have been issued with the license,” she said.

Read the rest of this article on fake medicine in China.

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By Thompson Ayodele | From today’s Wall Street Journal Europe

LAGOS, Nigeria, Today, as we mark World AIDS Day, we should take stock of the suffering this disease continues to inflict, particularly in developing countries.

Twenty-five years after the disease was first discovered, AIDS continues to claim around two million lives each year. As an African, I’ve witnessed the suffering first-hand. My home region of sub-Saharan Africa has 12% of the world’s population, but accounts for two-thirds of those infected with AIDS and 75% of all AIDS-related deaths.

Western activists continue to blame the high price of drugs for the disease’s continued prevalence in Africa. They argue that poor countries should be permitted to break pharmaceutical patents to produce cheap knock-off versions at home.

Unfortunately, the activists are not just wrong; their policy proposal is flat-out dangerous. The real causes of restricted access to AIDS drugs are Africa’s derelict transportation systems, widespread corruption and poor utility infrastructure.

Most of the high-quality AIDS drugs that Africa imports have to be transported over vast distances and stored for extended periods of time before they can be distributed. But the roads and warehouses in most African countries are poorly maintained. Electricity, needed to keep drugs refrigerated, is scarce. Corrupt officials often exploit weaknesses in the supply chain, and extort hefty bribes from aid personnel.

Read more about drug patents and AIDS in Africa.

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