Sistema de patentes e direito à saúde: uma análise do acesso a medicamentos no caso da doença negligenciada sífilis em um contexto de saúde global

Abstract

The present study aimed to investigate the relationship between the right to health and access to medicines, based on the current patent system. This purpose was due to the moment when a real crisis is revealed by the lack of supply of penicillin, an antibiotic used in the treatment of such infections. Initially the study was aimed at verifying the theoretical conceptual framework concerning the right to health from its conception as a fundamental human right as well as its relation with the patent institute, since the perspective of access to medicines. The fact that generates this crisis that so severely affects the treatment of syphilis is largely attributed to international agreements and treaties in which the right to patents is conferred on the pharmaceutical industries that, by monopolizing the market, place the collective interest in a situation of vulnerability. This is compounded by the effects of the process of globalization, which favors the rapid spread of diseases, requiring that prophylactic and treatment measures be adopted to deal with those affected. In this scenario, the State has been silent and does not fulfill its service function with regard to the supply of medicines. At the end of the exclusive right of use by the expiration of the term or by the patent infringement, the public domain becomes a discouragement for the pharmaceutical industry, especially when the product to be produced does not represent a prospect of earning the intended profits, such as is the case of penicillin. In view of such a framework, the study aimed to answer the following question: to what extent is the right to health, understood in this research as the right of access to medicines for the treatment of neglected disease Syphilis, finds an obstacle in the current normative model in which the patent system is structured? The study concluded that the patent system, anchored in international laws and agreements, is at the service of the large pharmaceutical corporations and, therefore, dissociates itself from its greater purpose of promoting development and effecting the social function of industrial property. It was also realized that measures, such as public policies aimed at accompanying the transition process between exclusive exploitation with high pricing and changing status of the drug when falling into the public domain could, supposedly, minimize the current scenario of neglected diseases, such as Syphilis. To do so, the research was based on the systemic-complex theory and, in a macro sense, on the method of deductive approach and on the monographic and structuralist procedures, and bibliographic and documentary analysis was applied as technique. Thus, this dissertation is integrally inserted in the Concentration Area of the postgraduate program from University Federal de Santa Maria (UFSM) called “Emerging Rights in the Global Society”, as well as in the research line of “Socio-biodiversity Rights and Sustainability: development and dimensions of sustainability.