By Jeremy Clarke NAIROBI, Jan 29 (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of people being treated for AIDS will suffer if Swiss drugmaker Novartis <NOVN.VX> succeeds in changing India's patent law, humanitarian agency Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said on Monday. "If Novartis gets through with its case our lives are at risk," Monique Wanjala, a woman who has been living with HIV for 13 years, told a news conference in Nairobi. "We want this case dropped," she said. "If we die because affordable generic drugs aren't available, where will they sell the drug? If profits are going to be put before peoples' lives then we have a serious problem." Novartis is challenging a specific provision of India's patent law that, if overturned, would see patents being granted far more widely, heavily restricting the availability of affordable generic medicines, MSF said in a statement. "If they hit India it basically cuts off the lifeline for generic medicines. They're going for the jugular," MSF spokesman James Lorenz said. India's generic drugs form the backbone of MSF's AIDS programmes, in which 80,000 people in 30 countries, including African countries, receive treatment. "We are reaching a quarter of the people who need antiretroviral treatment in sub-Saharan Africa," Dr Ivy Mwangi of MSF said. "Rapid scale-up in treatment is only possible with the availability and affordability of generic drugs, most of which are produced in India." In 2000, antiretroviral (ARV) treatment cost was estimated at $10,000 per patient annually. But thanks to the availability of generic drugs produced mainly in India, the cost came down to about $70 per patient per year, she said. India has long been an important source of affordable generic medicines as it did not grant pharmaceutical patents until 2005, when it was forced to comply with World Trade Organisation rules on intellectual property. Novartis argues that the principle of intellectual property protection must be safeguarded if innovation is to flourish. MSF said spurious patents on "new" drugs of insignificant difference -- like a drug becoming a capsule rather than a pill and no longer requiring refrigeration -- were threatening lives in the developing world.
