Projects and Partners

Brazil

Project Funding 2010

• Funding of a website for exchange of information on global patent issues between Indian and Brazilian civil society, Associaçao Brasiliera Interdisciplinar de Aids (ABIA)

€14,533.00

Patients, not profits: Patent for AIDS drug blocked in Brazil

Medico’s Brazilian partner Associação Brasileira Inter- disciplinar de AIDS (ABIA) achieved a major success in drugs in the struggle over pharmaceutical patents and for access to AIDS medicindes. In August 2008 the National A workshop, financed by Medico, was held in Rio de Brazilian Institute for Intellectual Property (INPI) turned Janeiro in December 2008 so that more activists from down a patent application filed by US pharmaceutical company Gilead for the drug Tenofovir. ABIA gave evidence to the INPI showing that Tenovir’s structure and properties had been known since the 1980s, proving that Gielad's findings were not new and the patent claim was invalid. Tenovir happens to be one of the most important and at the same time most expensive drugs in the government's HIV treatment programme. Now, prices could fall significantly following the ruling. A workshop, financed by Medico, was held in Rio de Janeiro in December 2008 so that more activists from different NGOs could learn how to appeal against pharmacy patents. ABIA was created in 1987, becoming a highly reputed NGO in Brazil. It is committed to fighting AIDS and defending the human rights of HIV positive people.