Indonesia Licenses Patents for Seven HIV & Hepatitis B Medicines

Precedent-Setting Government Order has Extraordinary Lifesaving Potential

On September 3, the government of Indonesia took a quiet but exceptionally important step to expand access to medicines and help save and improve lives of people living with HIV/AIDS and hepatitis B. President Dr. H. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono signed a decree authorizing government use of patents for seven HIV/AIDS and hepatitis medicines. If implemented to the full, the measure would introduce widespread generic competition and generate major cost savings in the world’s fourth most populous country. The decree licenses patents for a slate of HIV medicines, and represents one of the most robust uses of pharmaceutical patent licensing power by a country since the World Trade Organization 1995 Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (WTO’s TRIPS).

Indonesia’s action sets a powerful example for other countries and a critical precedent for global public health. The Presidential decree is part of an effort to greatly expand access to newer and more appropriate antiviral and antiretroviral treatments in Indonesia.

The licensed medicines include efavirenz, abacavir, didanosin, lopinavir + ritonavir, tenofovir, tenofovir + emtricitabine, and tenofovir + emtricitabine + efavirenz.  

More information, including a copy of the decree (in Indonesian and a rough unofficial English translation), analysis, a table of the licensed medicines, and more on Indonesia’s response to HIV and hepatitis B, is available here: www.citizen.org/actions-indonesia.

Author

  • Peter Maybarduk

    Peter Maybarduk is Public Citizen's Global Access to Medicines Program Director. Maybarduk helps governments and civil society groups around the world use flexibilities in patent and trade rules to promote access to medicines for all. For example, Maybarduk's recent work with partners yielded major HIV/AIDS drug price reductions in Colombia and new state access to medicines policies enacted by the President of Ecuador. His work also focuses on protecting competition and access under intellectual property enforcement policies, and on appropriate policy responses to criminally adulterated or falsified medicines.

    Maybarduk has co-founded and coordinated several volunteer-run advocacy and assistance groups, including International Professional Partnerships for Sierra Leone (IPPSL), dedicated to supporting public sector development in one of the world's least developed countries. He studied law at the University of California at Berkeley and anthropology at the College of William and Mary. Maybarduk is a composer and performer of music, currently recording his third album with producer J. Robbins.

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