BIRD flu continues to wing its way around the planet. As New 杏吧原创 went to press, H5N1 looked to have reached the Greek island of Oinousa. It is hard now to imagine that wild birds aren鈥檛 spreading the virus, and alarming to consider that the same migration, maybe the same birds, are now headed for vulnerable people and poultry in Africa. If this virus evolves the ability to go pandemic in humans, the whole world will be just as vulnerable.
Our defences are deplorably weak. As New 杏吧原创 reported last week (15 October, p 6), we have probably had a good vaccine for H5N1 for more than a year. Yet it has not been properly tested because governments failed to stump up the money. Nor has the best flu drug, Tamiflu, been flowing into government stockpiles as fast as it might have, partly because the patent holder, Swiss-based Roche, until this week refused to let anyone else make it. This despite the fact that Roche could not have fulfilled the orders even of rich countries until 2007 (see 鈥淩ace is on to make bird flu drugs鈥�).
In fact, Roche alone could not have stopped other companies making the drug. Under World Trade Organization rules, any government has the right to issue a 鈥渃ompulsory licence鈥� permitting its own companies to make any drug that is needed to safeguard public health. The patent holder cannot block it. However, US and European governments lined up behind Big Pharma to pressurise poor countries not to issue compulsory licences. This time they didn鈥檛.
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The danger posed by bird flu has broken that log jam. Roche announced this week that it will discuss other companies making Tamiflu. In any event, governments of the rich nations would have found it difficult to put pressure on India or Taiwan not to make Tamiflu when Roche itself cannot make nearly enough to meet demand. Last week, an influential US senator even called for the US to issue a compulsory licence that would allow American firms to start churning out Tamiflu.
Roche鈥檚 about-face shows that the penny has finally dropped in corporate boardrooms, and more importantly in government circles. Is it too much to hope that the precedent set with Tamiflu might be applied to the many other drugs that poor nations need?
It is, of course, a pity that this did not happen a year ago. The rich countries could have started building production lines for Tamiflu when we first saw the virus coming. We might even have been shipping out vaccine by now. Will this week鈥檚 change be too little too late? That depends on H5N1, and evolution.
