BUENOS AIRES  – On Tuesday July 21st members of Fundación GEP met with the head of the Ministry of Industry, Lic. Débora Giorgi, and the President of the National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI) Cdor. Mario Aramburu, to analize the topics of the joint agenda on access to medicines and intellectual property. Among these were reviewed the presentations submitted by Fundación GEP to the INPI to oppose patent requests for ATRIPLA, TRUVADA and SOFOSBUVIR, drugs used in treatment for HIV and Hepatitis C. Other highly important issues to guarantee access to medicines were also discussed, such as the use of health safeguards included in the Argentine Patent Law, the promotion of medicine’s public production and generic medicines’ use, and an intellectual property rights’ interpretation that priorizes main goals of development, public health and human rights.

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Emiliano Martínez (Coordination Assistant, FGEP), José María Di Bello (Red Mundial Personas con VIH de Cruz Roja); Débora Giorgi (Minister of Industry), Roberto Aramburu (President, INPI), Lorena Di Giano (Executive Director, FGEP) and Alex Freyre (President, FGEP) at the meeting in the Ministry of Industry.

In the meeting, Minister Giorgi highlighted the Argentine government’s will to actively participate to support universal access to health by means of seeking strategies to lower the medicines’ costs, guarantee their availability in the long term and develop the public laboratories’ capacity to produce medicines of high impact on public health. The Industry Minister also emphasized the importance of agreeing on joint strategies for the region through the MERCOSUR and UNASUR bodies and the key role of working together with civil society’s organizations.