Viagra makers accused of 'harming the poor'

Oxfam has launched a bitter campaign in Delhi against the world's biggest pharmaceutical company, Pfizer, claiming that the company "has consistently pursued policies that are detrimental to the interests of the world's poor".

It urged the firm on Thursday to stop insisting on full patent protection in poor countries, and instead allow the price of medicines to fall. In India, drugs do not enjoy patent protection and thus are among the cheapest in the world.

Siddarth Deva, a policy adviser to Oxfam, pointed out that Indian versions of Viagra, such as Penegra 50, "are marketed in Delhi at prices between 9 and 11 per cent of those charged by Pfizer for its patented version".

Viagra is one example, but the same is true for drugs used in the treatment of HIV/Aids.

Pfizer's drug Diflucan, for example, which is prescribed for opportunistic infections in HIV/Aids sufferers, is marketed in Africa at prices some 25 times higher than generic equivalents on the market in India. The export in large quantities of such generic drugs brings them within reach of even poor African Aids patients.

More than two thirds of the 36 million people estimated to be living with HIV/Aids are in sub-Saharan Africa. The region's infection rate of 8.8 per cent is the highest in the world.

India has the highest number of pharmaceutical manufacturing companies in the world, some 20,000, which between them make 40,000 different drugs. These companies thrive in a market that until now has provided no patent protection.

But if Pfizer, which is valued at $266bn (£187bn) has its way, such cheap generic drugs will be banned from the marketplace, and countries that fail to ban them will face trade sanctions.

Pfizer is pushing for the enforcement of the Trade- Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (Trips), the World Trade Organisation's new 20-year patent regime. As a newly signed-up member of the WTO, India is obliged to fall in line with the accord. When the new amendment of India's patents law comes into force, possibly within months, India's legions of drugs companies will no longer be at liberty to produce similar versions of drugs produced by Pfizer and the other multinational pharmaceutical giants.

Only the brand-name originals will be available to patients in India and other developing countries – with potentially devastating consequences for public health.

Mr Veda said yesterday: "We believe that Pfizer and other pharmaceutical companies have consistently pursued policies on intellectual property rights in general, and on patents in particular, that are detrimental to the interests of the world's poor. While we welcome the various philanthropic programmes in which Pfizer is involved, we are concerned that the company is ... jeopardising the access of poor people to vital medicines."

In a new briefing paper on Pfizer, Oxfam concedes that patents "can be an important incentive for research and development", but argues that a uniform, global "one-size-fits-all" patent system as envisaged by Trips "has huge failings and must be reformed". The leading pharmaceutical companies, the paper goes on, "have it in their power to save many thousands of lives at little or no cost". It urged the directors of such companies to take this responsibility "much more seriously".

In a statement issued yesterday in London, Pfizer said: "Patent protection makes drug discovery possible and profitable. It is the incentive that justifies investing billions of dollars and decades of time to find new cures."

Subbarman Ramkrishna, vice-president, corporate affairs, of Pfizer Ltd (India), said: "Only one-third of India's population has access to modern medicines, even though the price of medicines is the lowest in the world. The problem is not the price but the lack of infrastructure".

He also claimed that "as there is no protection, there is no incentive for research by Indian scientists into treatment for diseases prevalent in India, such as malaria".