CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 335Pharmaceutical Economics and PolicyIntellectual Property LawHIV/AIDS Impact and Responses

Driving a decade of change: HIV/AIDS, patents and access to medicines for all

Open access
Hoen, Ellen 't, Berger, Jonathan, Calmy, Alexandra, Moon, Suerie·2011·Journal of the International AIDS Society
DOI 10.1186/1758-2652-14-15PMC PMC3078828
Open this paper in CoChat — free accountOpen PDF

Abstract

Since 2000, access to antiretroviral drugs to treat HIV infection has dramatically increased to reach more than five million people in developing countries. Essential to this achievement was the dramatic reduction in antiretroviral prices, a result of global political mobilization that cleared the way for competitive production of generic versions of widely patented medicines. Global trade rules agreed upon in 1994 required many developing countries to begin offering patents on medicines for the first time. Government and civil society reaction to expected increases in drug prices precipitated a series of events challenging these rules, culminating in the 2001 World Trade Organization's Doha Declaration on the Agreement on Trade‐Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights and Public Health. The Declaration affirmed that patent rules should be interpreted and implemented to protect public health and to promote access to medicines for all. Since Doha, more than 60 low‐ and middle‐income countries have procured generic versions of patented medicines on a large scale. Despite these changes, however, a “treatment timebomb” awaits. First, increasing numbers of people need access to newer antiretrovirals, but treatment costs are rising since new ARVs are likely to be more widely patented in developing countries. Second, policy space to produce or import generic versions of patented medicines is shrinking in some developing countries. Third, funding for medicines is falling far short of needs. Expanded use of the existing flexibilities in patent law and new models to address the second wave of the access to medicines crisis are required. One promising new mechanism is the UNITAID‐supported Medicines Patent Pool, which seeks to facilitate access to patents to enable competitive generic medicines production and the development of improved products. Such innovative approaches are possible today due to the previous decade of AIDS activism. However, the Pool is just one of a broad set of policies needed to ensure access to medicines for all; other key measures include sufficient and reliable financing, research and development of new products targeted for use in resource‐poor settings, and use of patent law flexibilities. Governments must live up to their obligations to protect access to medicines as a fundamental component of the human right to health.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1186/1758-2652-14-15

Cites

89 of 89 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • Community organization, generic drug manufacturing, research, and advocacy allowed massive up-scaling of HIV treatment after cost assessment suggested that profitable manufacturing could be achieved while meeting patient need globally.

    “Community organization, generic drug manufacturing, research, and advocacy allowed the massive up-scaling of treatment after assessment of pharmaceutical costs suggested that profitable manufacturing could be achieved while meeting patient need globally [39].”

    From Estimated minimum prices and lowest available national prices for antiobesity medications: Improving affordability and access to treatment (2023) · cites this paper as [39]

    The review’s ‘The tide begins to turn’ and ‘Implementing the Doha Declaration’ sections describe activism, lower-priced generic drugs, and the expansion of HIV treatment purchasing. They do not report a pharmaceutical-cost assessment showing that manufacturing could be profitable while meeting global patient need; the Introduction instead says millions still needed treatment. (LLM, conf=0.88)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

3 of the 92 references couldn’t be matched to a known paper.

Research works printed but not linked: 9

  1. Perez-Casas C Mace C Berman D Double J Accessing ARVs: untangling the web of antiretroviral price reductions (1st edition) 2001 Geneva: Medecins Sans Frontieres/Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines http://www.msfaccess.org/fileadmin/user_upload/diseases/hiv-aids/Untangling_the_Web/UTW%201%20Sep%202001.pdf
  2. World Health Organization (WHO) Antiretroviral therapy for HIV infection in adults and adolescents: Recommendations for a public health approach (2010 Revision) 2010 Geneva: World Health Organization http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/2010/9789241599764_eng.pdf 23741771
  3. Geffen N Guidelines on when to start treatment in resource poor settings HIV Treatment Bulletin South 2009 14 4 http://i-base.info/htb-south/190/
  4. Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders AIDS Triple Therapy for Less than $1 a day. Press release 2001 http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/press/release.cfm?id=656
  5. Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health WT/MIN(01)/DEC/2, Ministerial Conference 2001
  6. Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) After Indian court ruling, MSF hands over petition with 420,000 signatures to Novartis. Press release 2007 http://www.msfaccess.org/media-room/press-releases/press-release-detail/index.html%3Ftx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=159&cHash=edaee9c4fb
  7. Avafia T Berger J Hartzenberg T The ability of select sub-Saharan African countries to utilize TRIPS flexibilities and competition law to ensure a sustainable supply of essential medicines: A study of producing and importing countries 2008 International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD), United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), Trade Law Centre for Southern Africa (TRALAC) http://www.iprsonline.org/unctadictsd/docs/Trade%20and%20Competition%2030%203%2006%20final%20Edit1%20_2_%20_2_.pdf
  8. Untangling the web of antiretroviral price reductions (Online Edition) 2010 http://utw.msfaccess.org/ [cited 10 January 2009].
  9. Correa CM Protection of Data Submitted for the Registration of Pharmaceuticals: Implementing the Standards of the TRIPS Agreement 2002 Geneva: The South Centre 15709300

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Related

Authors
Hoen, E. '., Berger, J., Calmy, A., & Moon, S.
Affiliations
  • Medicines Patent Pool (CH)
  • Section27 (ZA)
  • Médecins Sans Frontières (UG)
  • Harvard University (US)
Corresponding author
Hoen, Ellen 't
ORCID
Venue
Journal of the International AIDS Society
Publisher
Wiley
Published
2011-01
Volume
14
Issue
1
Pages
15-15
ISSN
1758-2652 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1186/1758-2652-14-15
PMC
PMC3078828
OpenAlex
W2113482932
Cited by
334
References
92
Citations by year
2026: 18 · 2025: 35 · 2024: 18 · 2023: 20 · 2022: 14 · 2021: 56 · 2020: 28 · 2019: 28 · 2018: 19 · 2017: 15 · 2016: 19 · 2015: 15 · 2014: 12 · 2013: 12 · 2012: 10
FWCI
5.59
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • Journal of the International AIDS Society (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • Digital Access to Scholarship at Harvard (DASH) (Harvard University) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
  • Medecins Sans Frontieres Field Research (Medecins Sans Frontieres) (submittedVersion)
Funders
  • Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
  • Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria
  • World Health Organization
  • National Institutes of Health
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Pharmaceutical Economics and Policy
  • Social Sciences › Law › Intellectual Property Law
  • Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › HIV/AIDS Impact and Responses
Keywords
HIV/AIDS, access to medicines, antiretroviral drugs, patents, generic drugs, Doha Declaration, TRIPS, intellectual property, Medicines Patent Pool, UNITAID, drug pricing, developing countries, AIDS activism, right to health, drug financing
MeSH terms
Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome, Health Services Accessibility, Humans, Patents as Topic, HIV Infections, Anti-HIV Agents

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review