By Alec van Gelder and Franklin Cudjoe

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Activists have been trying for years to bring down the pharmaceutical industry. Their “patients not patents” campaign has a simplistic appeal but will only make things worse for the poor, as well as distracting attention from the real causes of ill health: poverty and corruption.

The patents that protect today’s innovations and drive research and development to create tomorrow’s life-saving treatments are under threat at a forthcoming World Health Organisation meeting. Ahmed Ogwell, of Kenya’s Ministry of Health, a big player in the meeting, claims that drug production, backed by intellectual property protection, “has failed quite dramatically in Africa (...) that is why the disease burden is in fact probably increasing in some areas.”