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Thai health groups urge boycott of US drug manufacturer

Health groups in Thailand called for a boycott of US drug maker Abbott Laboratories, after it announced it will not introduce new medicines in the country due to the government's decision to allow generic versions of its patented AIDS-fighting drug.

"What they did is synonymous with holding our patients hostage," Kriengsak Vacharanukulki-eti, head of the Rural Doctors' Society said on Tuesday. "It's not just a threat to Thai patients, it's a threat to patients in poor countries everywhere."

The society has asked rural hospitals and their staff to stop using Abbott products. It is one of several Thai health advocacy and consumer groups that vowed to boycott Abbott products unless the company changes its position.

Abbott has withdrawn applications in Thailand to register a new formulation of the HIV-fighting drug Kaletra, the painkiller Brufen, an antibiotic called Abbotic, the blood-clotting medicine Clivarine, arthritis drug Humira, high-blood pressure medication Tarka and kidney disease drug Zemplar.

Abbott declined to comment on the proposed boycott. But its director for HIV communication and policy, Dirk van Eeden, repeated the company's reason for restricting the introduction of new medicines in Thailand.

"Thailand has chosen to break patents on a number of medicines, ignoring the patent system," he said by telephone from the company's US headquarters in Illinois. "As such, we've elected not to introduce new medicines."

In January, the Thai government issued a so-called "compulsory license" allowing the use of much cheaper generic versions of Abbott's Kaletra AIDS drug.

It also issued a similar license for blood thinner Plavix, marketed by France's Sanofi-Aventis SA and US drug maker Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.

According to WTO agreements on intellectual property, a government may issue a compulsory license allowing generic versions of drugs in case of a national public health emergency.

Such action has been taken by several countries, most notably Brazil and India, especially for AIDS medicines.

More than 500,000 people in Thailand are living with HIV, according to UNAIDS, the UN agency that coordinates the global fight against the AIDS virus.

Paul Cawthorne, Thailand's representative of Medicins Sans Frontieres-Belgium, said he was shocked by Abbott's action.

"It was the first time I have seen such a reaction from a drug company," he said. "If they think Thailand has broken a law, they should have challenged it in court instead of acting like a spoiled child."

Thai public health officials say Abbott's move will not directly threaten public access to medicines in Thailand.

Nimit Tienudom, executive director of AIDS Access, a patients' advocacy group in Thailand, said that his group supports a boycott of Abbott because its action "is being used as a threat that other companies might decide to adopt."
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