Glaxo chairman slams India AIDS drugs offer

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Glaxo chairman slams India AIDS drugs offer.

INDIA: INTERVIEW-Glaxo chairman slams India AIDS drugs offer.

By Sitaraman Shankar. 01/10/2002. Reuters English News Service

BOMBAY, Jan 10 (Reuters) - GlaxoKline Plc's chairman said his

company was willing to provide cheap drugs to African countries

genuinely keen to solve the AIDS problem and dismissed as rhetoric

Indian firms' cut-price drug offers.

In an interview with Reuters on Thursday, Sir Sykes lashed

out at South Africa, which he suggested was not serious about solving

its AIDS crisis.

" We have differential pricing programmes where the infrastructure is

in place, where the government of that country is committed to

getting anti-AIDS programmes running, " said Sykes, who is in India

for an Indo-British science festival.

" There are many other places where there is no such commitment, no

intention to get the programmes running. South Africa is a good

example... the court case was nothing but a facade. "

He was referring to a case fought by 39 multinational companies

seeking to prevent the South African government from importing cheap

generics. The companies eventually backed down.

India's Cipla Ltd stunned global drugmakers in February by offering

to supply a triple-drug cocktail made of copies of drugs produced by

GSK, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Germany's Boehringer Ingelheim, for

less than $1 a day.

The offer, at a thirtieth of the U.S. price, prompted multinationals

to cut prices for African patients.

" The fact that Indian companies said they could supply cheap drugs is

no more than high rhetoric and publicity, " Sykes said.

" You've got four million cases of AIDS in India... why aren't Cipla

making those (low-priced) drugs available to treat those patients

instead of talking about something they know is never going to happen

because the South African government is still resistant to treating

patients? "

Cipla is now supplying the anti-AIDS drugs to a large African

programme to treat 10,000 patients in Nigeria, and rival drugmaker

Ranbaxy Laboratories said in December it would also supply the drugs

to the west African country.

Sykes said AIDS had blown out of proportion the issue of access to

medicines.

" The pharmaceutical industry is not the problem, but part of the

solution, " he said, adding that a solution to the AIDS crisis would

evolve from a partnership between the industry, governments and

United Nations agencies.

INDIAN PATENTS

Sykes hoped patent protection in India would improve and said GSK

investment in the country could depend on this.

Indian drugmakers like Cipla and Ranbaxy can make drugs under patent

internationally because Indian patent law currently protects only

processes by which drugs are made and not the drugs themselves.

That means Indian companies can make patented drugs as long as they

use a process that is different from the original.

" We're looking forward to a time when the government... will stand by

its commitments (to the World Trade Organisation), " he said.

" The lack of intellectual property protection is the biggest

deterrent to investment... technology is going to be critically

important to India's economy and not having intellectual property

protection will do long-term harm to the nation. "

India is expected to adopt a stronger patent law before 2005, in line

with its WTO commitments.

CLINICAL TRIALS

Sykes said GSK was " approaching " the opportunity of carrying out

low-cost clinical trials for its drugs in India, but Indian partners

had to meet GSK's quality guidelines.

He said Dr Reddy's Laboratories , India's only U.S.-listed drugmaker,

was " going down the route of becoming a research-based company and

doing relatively well " as was Ranbaxy.

" They do what they do today because of the situation but they are

quite capable of becoming global players in the research-based

pharmaceutical arena, " he said, referring to Indian companies copying

drugs patented in the West.

The managing director of GSK's Indian unit Venkataraman Thyagarajan

said GSK had a marketing pact with Ranbaxy and could consider

licensing products from it as the relationship grew.

PIPELINE

Asked if he acknowledged GSK's long-term research pipeline had

weaknesses, Sykes said: " I think you could always say the cup's

half-empty or half-full.

" I think we have a very strong portfolio... there are going

to be issues of intellectual property and drugs going off

patent. There may be blips along the way... but in the next 5-10

years I think this is a very strong company, " he said.

Sykes said GSK hoped to launch a drug to treat benign prostate

enlargement later this year.

He identified GSK's anti-asthma drug Advair as the star of the future

and the anti-depressant market as one in which the company could be

affected by generic competition over the next five years.

Cross posing from <healthgap@...>

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