Abbott to offer new AIDS drug in Thailand

Bangkok, Apr 24: Thailand is weighing an offer from Abbott Laboratories Inc. to sell a newer form of its AIDS drug Kaletra at a discounted price, Health Minister Mongkol na Songkhla said.

He gave no details of the offer for Aluvia weeks after Abbott refused to launch the drug in Thailand in protest against the government's decision in January to override an international patent on Kaletra.

''They have proposed some price cuts for Aluvia tablets, but nothing has been concluded,'' Mongkol told Reuters yesterday.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Abbott offered to resubmit Aluvia at a new price, which is lower than any generic, provided Bangkok did not issue a compulsory licence allowing for the purchase or production of generic versions on Kaletra.

Mongkol declined to say whether Thailand would give such an assurance to the U.S. drug maker. ''You have to wait until the negotiation is complete,'' he said.

Abbott announced earlier this month it would cut the price of Kaletra by more than half to $1,000 per patient per year in low and middle-income countries.

AIDS activists had criticized the blocking of Aluvia because it is a heat-stable form of Kaletra, eliminating the need for costly cold storage in poor countries.

But now they fear Thailand will bargain away its rights under World Trade Organisation rules to issue a licence allowing the manufacture of a patented drug without the consent of a foreign patent owner.

''Basically, Abbott is still holding patients hostage in an attempt to force the government to backtrack on the compulsory licence,'' Paul Cawthorne of Medicins Sans Frontieres said.

Abbott officials were not available to comment on the Journal report, which said the company would continue to withhold six other drugs from Thailand.

The post-coup government shocked pharmaceutical giants last November when it decided to override the patent on Efavirenz, an HIV-AIDS treatment made by Merck & Co.

Since then, the drug firms have tried to persuade Bangkok to back down in return for cheaper prices.

In February, Merck cut the price of Efavirenz by 46 percent for countries hard hit by HIV-AIDS, including Thailand where 580,000 people are living with the disease.

French drugmaker Sanofi-Aventis has also offered better access to its heart disease medicine Plavix after Thailand announced a compulsory licence, the first by a developing country for such a drug.

The details of these offers have not been disclosed, but Cawthorne said Thai negotiators should be careful.

''Brazil has taken these kinds of offers and they found themselves paying prices way above other countries because they are locked into these contracts with the companies,'' he said.

Reuters