The Medicines Patent Pool announced today that its current licensing agreement with ViiV Healthcare for a new antiretroviral drug will be extended to all lower middle-income countries.
According to an MPP press release, this decision to amend the agreement allows generic dolutegravir distribution in four countries with patents that were not covered in the initial agreement: Armenia, Moldova, Morocco and Ukraine. These were the last lower middle-income countries remaining uncovered, it said.
“The MPP sub-licensees can now sell in countries that are home to 94% of people living with HIV in the developing world,” said the release.
The expansion “comes on the heels of ViiV Healthcare majority shareholder GlaxoSmithKline’s March 31 announcement of its new approach to managing intellectual property based on country economic maturity, and its intention of broadening licensing for countries that fall under the lower middle-income category as defined by the World Bank” (IPW, Public Health, 31 March 2016).
An estimated 270,000 people live with the HIV virus in the four countries now covered by the agreement, the release said.