The global health community has once again found itself in a familiar position: fighting the U.S. on a policy previously seen as a no-brainer.
The fight against tuberculosis, the world’s top infectious killer, has been consuming United Nations negotiators for the last two months as they prepare for the first U.N. high-level meeting on the disease, scheduled for Sept. 26. Tuberculosis kills three people a minute worldwide, and its increased drug-resistance is making it more dangerous than ever ― and this effort toward a U.N. declaration has been seen as a potential turning point in building the political will and commitment to fight it.
Despite being the top single-country funder by far in the worldwide fight against TB, the U.S. is on the defensive as other member nations push standard access-to-treatment language in a proposed declaration on fighting TB.
Echoing recent moves by the U.S. delegation ― such as its resistance to a breastfeeding resolution this year, and lesser-known fights over livestock antibiotics and sugary-drink taxes ― the U.S. has ended up taking a solitary stand for the pharmaceutical industry over TB patients, experts say.
They say the U.S. aggressively sought to water down language that gives governments the option to allow generic versions of patented TB drugs through “compulsory licensing” in the interest of public health and access. Advocacy groups say it gives patients better treatment access by making medicine more affordable, but the pharmaceutical industry argues it breaks patent law and kills innovation.
“How is it possible that global leaders will gather for the first time to decide how to tackle the world’s most deadly infectious disease killer, and yet some countries backed by their Big Pharma lobbies are pushing to remove any mention of the need for vital medicines to be affordable?” Sharonann Lynch, an adviser to Medicines de Frontier’s Access Campaign, said in a statement.
While similar language about access to medicines was included in a 2016 U.N. declaration on antimicrobial resistance, experts say that such “compulsory licensing” moves, covered under a World Trade Organization agreement on intellectual property rights, have fallen under threat in recent years in various global declarations. For instance, Colombia’s attempt to use such compulsory licensing for generic medications saw pushback from the U.S. trade representative this summer, according to STAT.
So the threat being used in this fight, according to Leonardo Palumbo, another adviser to Medicines de Frontier’s Access Campaign, is that the U.S. would refuse to sign the declaration ― much like it refused to sign the recent Group of Seven joint statement and withdrew from the U.N. Human Rights Council.
That would be a huge loss in the political momentum needed in the fight against TB, and it would weaken the declaration’s impact, considering the traditional leadership role of the U.S., according to Palumbo.
“According to recent reports, the United States government’s funding for global TB [research and development] makes up almost 60 percent of the world’s investment,” a U.S. representative said during a recent U.N. hearing to discuss the declaration. “We would like to take this opportunity to point out that most existing treatment drugs for TB are off patent and inexpensive and that of the two newer drugs, one is donated and the other currently has limited use according to WHO guidelines.”
Lucica Ditiu, executive director of the international Stop TB Partnership, acknowledged the U.S.’s point ― the language about access is not very useful considering the current limited field of TB drugs. However, she stressed that she’d love nothing more than for such language to be needed ― it would mean that more new drugs, instead of the limited options now, were available to combat TB.
Article source: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/united-nations-us-tuberculosis-pharmaceutical-companies_us_5b594307e4b0fd5c73cb9369