(Adds details, background, quotes) By Nopporn Wong-Anan BANGKOK, Jan 25 (Reuters) - Thailand's army-installed government has issued compulsory licences for cheap versions of a heart disease and an AIDS drug, the health minister said on Thursday, a move likely to enrage global pharmaceutical giants. "The laws have been signed and they are now effective," Health Minister Mongkol na Songkhla told Reuters. Mongkol said the drugs were for treatment of HIV-AIDS and heart disease, but declined to confirm newspaper reports they were Abbott's <ABT.N> Kaletra, and Plavix, a blockbuster anti-clotting agent sold by Sanofi-Aventis <SNY.N><SASY.PA> and Bristol-Myers Squibb <BMY.N>. He cited the ballooning costs of treatment as the reason for the move. "We have to do this because we have so many patients to treat with so little budget. We can't watch our people die and their patents have been here for so long," Mongkol said. In November, two months after Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra was ousted in a military coup, the interim government stunned drugs companies by issuing its first compulsory licence, to make a generic version of Efavirenz, an anti-retroviral drug. The decision drew a swift riposte from U.S. drug maker and patent holder Merck & Co Inc <MRK.N>. By contrast, AIDS activists applauded Bangkok for taking a bold stance. The widening of the compulsory licences is the latest blow to foreign investors who are still reeling from the capital controls imposed in December to stem a rise in the baht <THB=> and a proposed tightening of laws governing overseas firms in Thailand. "It's very, very worrying when companies' intellectual property rights are not supported within a country," said Judy Benn, executive director of the American Chamber of Commerce in Thailand. Under World Trade Organisation rules, a government is allowed to declare a "national emergency" and produce a patented drug without the permission of a foreign patent owner. The drug industry association in Thailand said on Wednesday it had written to Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont the previous day urging the government not to introduce compulsory licences in addition to the one covering Efavirenz. However, Mongkol brushed aside entreaties from Sanofi-Aventis bosses on Wednesday not to impose the licences and accused the U.S. and European drugs companies of making excessive profits. "They are reaping colossal benefit from us," he said. Instead, Thailand would buy copycat versions of the drugs from companies in China or India for as little as 10 percent of their original price, he said. Plavix is Bristol-Myers Squibb's biggest-selling medicine, with annual sales of $6 billion before a copycat Canadian-manufactured version briefly hit the market in August. Paul Cawthorne, head of Doctors Without Borders in Thailand, said Bangkok was spending 11,580 baht ($330) per patient per month for Kaletra and could cut its bill by two thirds if it switched to a generic manufacturer. "That's a perfectly legal method for them to ensure access to essential drugs for Thai people," he said. (Additional reporting by Ed Cropley)
