Saúde pública, patentes farmacêuticas e acesso a medicamentos: arranjos para a produção de medicamentos essenciais no Brasil (1960-2012).

Abstract

This thesis aims to study the relationship between public health, public policies and programs of access to therapeutic products and pharmaceutical patents. More specifically, there is special interest in understanding the relationship between the concept of essential medicines and public programs and policies and drug production in Brazil from 1960 to 2012. It can be considered that the efforts of Brazilian governments to foster the production of such products date back to the 1960s. We selected in this study public policies and initiatives, public and private, which were aimed at the production of essential medicines, highlighting the experience of copying ARVs; and for the production of vaccine, which gave rise to the National Immunization Program. In the most recent period (2008-), we see the emergence of the policy Productive Development Partnerships (PDPs). It is worth noting that such policy has the purpose of supplying the domestic market, specifically public distribution policies. The factor that significantly modified the way to format public policies and programs to strengthen local production of medicines was the signing of the TRIPS Agreement of the WTO in 1995, which forced countries to recognize pharmaceutical patents and the modification of the Brazilian Law of Property industrial (LPI) in 1996 Accordingly, the dissertation examines ways to deal with the Brazilian government monopolies created by pharmaceutical patents, namely the TRIPS safeguards and LPI, in order to protect public health. The dissertation aims to study both the policies themselves as, and especially, the arrangements that emerge from the articulation of such policies, programs and initiatives with the concept of essential medicines. For this it is necessary to study the evolution of this concept in their theoretical aspects and challenges to transform the concept in public policy over the 1980s. Finally, from previous experiences analyzed, we intend to study the current arrangements arising from the relationship between health public policies involving more broadly industries and economic sectors, the Productive Partnerships for Development. We address the relations that the dynamics of the establishment of this policy keeps with the concept of essential medicines, historically a central concept for public health in general, the policies of pharmaceutical care and the response to the problem of access to medicines and ensuring the realization of the right to health in Brazil